One day in Kenya, East Africa, I was outdoors and saw a huge African Black Mamba heading straight for me. I was standing just outside the back door of my friend’s house where I was visiting. He yelled to me to grab a club that he kept behind the door. I barely had time to get it when that poisonous snake was right before me, its head held high ready to attack.
I had never done this before in my life, but I beat that snake furiously with that club. It was either the snake dies or I die! If he had gotten to me first, I would have been finished. I beat him on the head so hard that he died. When it was over, I felt like a hero! I think I walked on cloud nine for a week.
Long ago in the beginning when Satan had rebelled against God and led our first parents, Adam and Eve to sin, God promised something wonderful. He told Satan that Someone would come who would trample him underfoot. Eve’s “offspring [Jesus] will crush your head” (Genesis 3:15). Jesus came and He did it. And when He stomped all over Satan, He stomped all over Satan’s evil angels, too. And yes, it was a little Boy who did it. Let’s see how He did it.
When Jesus grew up, He told us that we can trample on Satan, too; and if we don’t do it, Satan will trample over us. And we don’t want that, do we? We all must choose one or the other. We are in a great war—we can’t sit in the bleachers and just watch. And children are as important as grown-ups; they choose also, and Jesus invites you to join Him in stomping Satan underfoot.
It wasn’t only on His cross that Jesus saved the world
He started doing it when He was only a Baby. When the Bible speaks of Jesus’ birth, it says, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6, KJV).
How could a Baby have all those great names? It’s because He was the Son of God as well as “our” son. His Father was God, but He is also “our heavenly Father” because of Jesus.
But notice what it says about Him when He was only a Baby: “The government shall be upon His shoulder.” No other baby in all the world has ever had such a burden laid on his shoulder! In the United States, we are not allowed to lay “the government” upon the “shoulder” of any man (that is, to become President) who is younger than 35. But here the “government” is laid upon the “shoulder” of a Baby! Grown-ups become very quiet when they think about this. It’s something marvelous.
There is a great war going on between the “government” of God, and Satan with his evil angels. It’s not fought with guns and tanks; it’s the battle behind all other battles. It’s with sin, and every human heart is the battlefield. The heart of Jesus, when He was a boy, was included too. He couldn’t sit on the bleachers either, for He was down there in the arena fighting to overcome sin once for all. Satan had invented sin and claimed that it was so strong no one could overcome it. This proved, he said, that he was stronger and better than God. And Jesus had to prove he was wrong, or the universe itself would come apart!
If Satan had gotten Jesus as even a Baby to say or do something selfish, then he would have won this great war. No one knows how a little baby can choose to be selfish or unselfish, but we do know that all of us have been born self-centered by nature. Jesus as a Baby was tempted to be selfish just as much as any of us are tempted, but He always chose to be unselfish.
As a Child, He knew all our temptations to be lazy, to do or say wrong things. He “took” the same nature we have inherited from our fallen great-great-great grandfather Adam. Of course, the “battles” that He fought as an infant were those of an infant. But as He grew up, the battles became harder and harder. It was always a battle with “self.” Where we have lost our battles with self, He won.
He says, “I am not trying to do what I want, but only what He who sent Me wants” (that means, His Father). “I have come down from heaven to do not My own will but the will of Him who sent Me” (John 5:30; 6:38).
Does this mean that all His life on earth Jesus had to work hard? Never had any fun? Always fighting battles? We know He had fun, for He loved doing the good things that make us happy. But yes, He always was on His guard not to let Satan capture Him. And yes, we have a Savior who once was a Baby, and even then He won all His battles with Satan!
Children who read the Bible can easily find the places where Jesus invites them to follow Him: “Jesus said, ‘Let the children come to Me and do not stop them, because the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these’” (Matthew 19:13, 14). And then there is the last page of the Bible; it was probably the first page of the entire Bible that I ever read when I was a child: “The [Holy] Spirit and the Bride, say, ‘Come!’ Everyone who hears this must say, ‘Come!’ Come, whoever is thirsty, accept the water of life as a gift, whoever wants it” (Revelation 22:17).