Out of the Serpent’s Mouth

My heart shuddered in terror when I came upon the sight. This scene has played out countless times in every natural environment around the globe. But there, before my very eyes, I was witnessing the first stings of death.

A little toad sat silently in the grass before me, blood visible on its leg from the bite of a nearby snake. A black-and-yellow garden snake. The serpent was eyeing up its victim and appeared to be taking its time capturing it. Horror kept my eyes transfixed on the predator and its prey.

Why do I have such a fear of snakes? I ask myself now. Perhaps it’s the way they move; in my mind, it’s as if they skim the earth’s surface like an otherworldly entity rather than trample the ground like other living, breathing creatures. Maybe it’s the piercing eyes, the sharp fangs, the shedded remnants of their skin I find in the rocks and grass near my home.

Or, quite possibly, they remind me of my spiritual foe — that “ancient serpent,” the devil.

Revelation 12:9, 20:2

All I knew was that I couldn’t let that scene go on. Not then. Not there. I stomped my feet on the ground close to the snake and prodded it away from the toad, compelling it to slither into the darkness underneath my home’s front porch. When the snake was out of sight, I picked up the injured toad and placed it in a plant bed some distance away, hoping it could rest and avoid its tormenter.

At every moment, the ancient serpent, Satan, lies in wait to capture me, eyeing me up like fresh meat to be caught and savored. “Be self-controlled and alert,” I am warned in the apostle Peter’s first letter. “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). “‘He was a murderer from the beginning,’” Jesus warned the Jews — and now me — about the devil, “‘not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies’” (John 8:44).

Despite all those warnings, I have repeatedly tumbled into Satan’s sin traps. What looked to me like an easy route or an enticing detour was actually taking me straight into the viper’s nest.

Satan knows what my weaknesses are and sets the bait just right to lure me in. And in that sinful weakness, I fall for it.

And yet, from the very first sin — when Eve succumbed to the ancient serpent’s temptation and chose the fruit over God’s command — God desired mercy. When all appeared lost for mankind in the garden of Eden, God gave the devil a warning — and to Adam, Eve, and the rest of humanity, a promise: “‘And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel’” (Genesis 3:15).

God promised to send a Savior to crush the power of the devil, sin, and death. And He did, in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8b).

Jesus put himself into the serpent’s mouth and shed his holy blood so that we might be saved from enduring such a fate ourselves.

We, who every day can fall for Satan’s snares, no longer have to be mastered by the evil one.

When we spiritually bleed, God is there with His Word and Spirit to patch us back together, pick us up, and set us on the road to eternal glory once again. Guilt no longer has to poison us, for “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

Satan may still be able to wander the world and wreak havoc, but at the end, when the trumpets sound and Jesus returns to take His loved ones to His home of eternal light, the devil — that ancient serpent — will be forever banished to his lair of darkness, never again to venture out and prey upon the children of God.

And so with joy and hope in our hearts, we can boldly declare, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).

Image by Susan Aken from Pixabay