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The sermon teaches that believers possess no sufficient strength in themselves but are sustained by God’s omnipotent grace. Deuteronomy 33:25 is presented as a guaranteed promise: God gives strength suited to each day, including temptation, persecution, grief, and death. Job and Luther illustrate that extraordinary trials are met with extraordinary grace, while believers are warned not to confuse God’s provision with imagined fears. The closing appeal distinguishes those who trust God from unbelievers who face death and judgment without this promise.
Theological center: The omnipotent and faithful God preserves His people by proportioning His sustaining grace to every circumstance He appoints.
Applications: Trust God’s sufficient strength · Turn from Satan’s service · Be rid of fear · Confidence in God’s faithfulness
Primary texts: Deuteronomy 33:25
“As thy days, so shall thy strength be.” Deuteronomy 33:25 BELOVED, it seems a sad thing that every day must die and be followed by a night. When we have seen the hills clad with verdure to their summit and the seas laving their base with a silver glory, when we have stretched our eyes faraway, and have seen the widening prospect full of loveliness and beauty, and we have felt sad that the sunlight should ever set upon such a scene, and that so much beauty should be shrouded in the oblivion of darkness. But how much reason have we to bless God for nights! For if it were not for nights, how much of beauty would ever be discovered. Never should I have considered the heavens, the work of Your fingers, O my God, if You had not first covered the sun with a thick mantle of darkness—the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, had never been bright in mine eyes, if You had not hid the light of the sun and bidden him retire within the curtains of the west. Night seems to be the great friend of the stars—they would be all unseen by eyes of men were they not set in the foil of darkness. It is even so with winter. We might feel sad that all the flowers of summer must die and all the fruits of autumn must be gathered into their storehouses, that every tree must be stripped, and that all the fields must lose their fair flowers. But were it not for winter we should never see the glistening crystals of the snow. We should never behold the beauteous festoons of the icicles that hang from the eaves. Much of God’s marvelous miracles of hoarfrost must be hidden from us, if it were not for the cold chill of winter, which, when it robs us of one beauty, gives us another—when it takes away the emerald of verdure, it gives us the diamond of ice—when it casts from us the bright rubies of the flowers, it gives us the fair white ermine of snow. Well now, translate those two ideas and you will see why it is that even our sin—our lost and ruined estate—has been made the means, in the hand of God, of manifesting to us the excellencies of His character. My dear friends, if you and I had been without trouble, we never could have had such a promise as this given to us—“As thy days, so shall thy strength be.” It is our weakness that has made room for God to give us such a promise as this. Our sins make room for a Savior. Our frailties make room for the Holy Spirit to correct them. All our wanderings make room for the Good Shepherd, that He may seek us and bring us back. We do not love nights, but we do love stars. We do not love weakness, but we do bless God for the promise that is…