December 2 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading

Devotional

When we read Genesis 3, we revisit the place where our misery started and where our hope began.

Our misery started when we broke our covenant with God.

Our hope began when God broke our alliance with the devil. God did not allow us to fall under the everlasting spell of the devil. Immediately God put enmity between him and us.

That was God's grace. He loved us. When we fell and sinned, God did not permit us to embrace evil but placed enmity between the children of Eve and the brood of the serpent. The unholy alliance between humans and the devil was broken the day it started. Instead of an alliance, God made it a battle: "I will put enmity between [the serpent] and the woman."

God pronounced a curse on the serpent. In the words of this curse, humanity's future was symbolized by the figure of a man fighting off a snake. In this fight the man is wounded and the snake is crushed. "He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."

Further history and the rest of the Bible show us that people have not been doing so well in their fight against evil. The serpent's poison has deeply affected the behavior of us all. However, in Jesus, God came to our aid. That's the meaning of Christmas. Jesus delivered the decisive blow to our enemy—a blow from which the old serpent will never recover. And Christ has pulled us back to the service of God.

Now we are still fighting the serpent's offspring. Misery in all its ugly forms is still with us. "Deliver us from the evil one," we cry from our battlefield. But the time gets shorter and the hope gets brighter: "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet" (Rom. 16:20).

God will crush the evil one. But he uses our feet.

REFLECTIONS

Do you sometimes feel you are losing the battle with the serpent and his poison? During those times, what "pulls you back to the service of God"?

Andrew Kuyvenhoven's Daylight, a modern devotional classic, was originally published by Paideia Press in 1977. This updated edition is copyright 2009 by Faith Alive Christian Resources. You can order a copy of this revised version of the book directly from the publisher.

A man of many accomplishments, Andrew Kuyvenhoven is probably best known for his contributions to Today (formerly The Family Altar), a widely-used monthly devotional booklet associated with the Back to God Hour. Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations for this updated edition of Daylight are from the Holy Bible: Today's New International Version copyright 2001, 2005 by the International Bible Society.