December 16 Daily Devotional

Monthly Theme:

The Prince of Peace, the Son of David, was announced by Isaiah. The story of his coming was proclaimed by the evangelists, each with a different emphasis. Jesus made God's kingship real in this world. Today, the kingdom is here—and it is coming.

Bible Reading:

Luke 3:23, 37

Bible Text:

He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph ... the son of Adam, the son of God (Luke 3:23, 37).

Devotional:

Matthew wrote for the Jews. The good news, as he told it, is that the promises to Abraham and David were fulfilled in Jesus. The promise to David was a thousand years old. The promise to Abraham was two thousand years old. But God never forgets and always does what he has promised.

Luke writes for the non-Jews, He wants the whole world to know that God is seeking the lost. Through Jesus, God comes to bring all human beings home. Therefore Luke's family record of Jesus goes back not one thousand years to David or two thousand years to Abraham, but all the way back to Adam. And who shall say how many years that is?

Adam is the widest circle in human genealogy. All of us are his children. None of us can shake the inheritance of sin and death that ties us to our first parents.

Now God has made a new beginning. Just as Adam had his origins not in flesh and blood but in God, so Jesus is God's new beginning. Jesus is the new Adam. And he restores nobility to all of us. All the people of the world must be children of God and sisters and brothers of each other.

Thus Jesus has come to save the human race. He brings the children of Adam into the covenant of grace that was established with Abraham. Jesus removes the curse from the Gentiles so that all children of Adam can receive the blessing of Abraham. And Jesus guarantees their eternal security under the throne of David.

Andrew Kuyvenhoven's Daylight, a modern devotional classic, was originally published in 1994. This edition is copyright by Faith Alive Christian Resources, from whom may be ordered Daylight, the predecessor of Twilight.

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 edition of Twilight are from the New International Version

Be sure to read the "Preface" and the "Acknowledgments" by the author.