Dear Friends,
Alas, most of us tend to extremes. When it comes to Satan we are either fascinated by him (a dangerous situation) or we are ignorant of his devices (an unbiblical situation). Today’s devotional tells you want you need to know to trample him under your feet. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Genesis 3:15 (ESV)

  15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,
  and between your offspring[a] and her offspring;
  he shall bruise your head,
  and you shall bruise his heel.”

• Revelation 12:4-5, 17 (ESV)

  4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. 5 She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne…

  17 Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea.

John saw in a single vision the furious enmity that has dominated human history at the deepest level. The woman is Eve, Sarah, Mary, the church ― all those who are the objects of God’s gracious promise. The dragon is the beguiling Serpent, seething with hatred, and bent on destroying God’s plan for the world’s redemption. Ever sin God spoke in the Garden, Satan has feared and hated childbirth. The barrenness of Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel, Athaliah’s attempt to murder the royal line, the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem ― all were his malevolent work, a desperate attempt to destroy the seed of promise, thereby averting the curse on himself.

     “The dragon mounted his final and most furious assault on Good Friday. At the cross, he humiliated and hoped to destroy the promised child. But that child was ‘caught up to God and to his throne,’ for death could not hold the one who in life had never aligned himself with the Serpent. Thwarted again and again through redemptive history, the Serpent was on Easter vanquished forever by the son of Eve. He can now only rage against us in a fury inspired by defeat and humiliation as he awaits his destruction.” [Charles D. Drew, The Ancient Love Song: Finding Christ in the Old Testament, (Phillips, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2000), p. 21]