The head of Satan would be bruised, and of course a serpent, the head of which is bruised, can do nothing more to you. A child can stand by the side of it, because the monster can no more move, its tooth can no longer wound, its poison can no longer harm.

And that is what God’s real people wanted. It was not enough that Satan could no longer persecute and pursue them. Satan must not merely be bound, so that they might be free from him. No, Satan with bruised head must lie there before all eyes, that God’s people, with their children, could stand by, and refresh themselves with the sight of how completely by God’s wondrous potency Satan’s power to destroy had been destroyed.

Has that moment of triumph, that hour of victory, already come for God’s people, or does the peon of that victory still tarry?

In answering this question be serious, be honest, and play not with words.

No, in the full sense that triumph has not yet been reached.

Satan indeed still has power. The church of God experiences this still every moment and in all lands. The enemy of our soul everytime arrays himself to ruin us personally and the heart of our children. In the thoughts and deliberations, that trouble the nations, his influence is ever yet observable.

So bound that he can no more move himself, his head so bruised, that he can make no more advances, Satan is not yet. His poison has by no means yet lost its venom. And the hour, when he shall be cast forever into the lake of fire, does not come, till Christ has appeared upon the clouds. Yea, even this return of Christ must yet be preceded by a dreadful revelation of the power of Satan, when the “man of sin” comes and the Antichrist shall be revealed, who opposes everything that is called God, that he might himself be worshiped as God.

The pleasing representation, that Satan had indeed a place in the Old Tetsament, but after the Cross of Golgotha, had been robbed of all power, must be denied in the name of Holy Scripture, and is indeed contradicted by the cruel, bitter experience of soul on the part of every child of God.

Yea, truly, Satan is still alive. Satan still exercises power and lays his snares, and age after age the church of God, and in that church all the people of God must continue to pray: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil One.”

Once the completed triumph surely comes, but it can not come, except first all the wickedness of Satan shall have spent itself, and our Savior’s realm of glory shall have been ushered in.

Thus to this extent God’s people still live by prophecy; God’s real child still feeds on the paradise-promise; and pants with thirst after that glorious hour, when all conflict shall cease, when the last enemy shall be put under Jesus’ feet, and God shall become all in all, that all His people may have part with Him in His glory.

But even this is not all.

For the paradise-promise by itself is perfectly sufficient for our comforting, and by itself we should not need anything additional to it; but since the days of paradise that promise has been put to the test.

Between us and that promise stands the Cross of Golgotha.

In that promise there was not merely something promised, but also something threatened; and what that threat implied, has been executed at Golgotha. The Woman’s seed appeared, and that Woman’s seed had its heels bruised, so that Christ was cast down, and fell and was carried out to the grave of dissolution.

In part this awful fratricide committed on the Son of God supported the reality and the trustworthiness of the promise; for so it had been foretold. That it should come to this, had been announced. And the coming of the Seed of the woman and the fall of that Elect One had been prophecied.

For that very reason it could not rest with the Cross.

Therefore after the Cross an altogether unique event must follow.

For had that Cross been the last, and had we received nothing more than the Paradise-promise; our soul would have refused to be comforted, because then seemingly Satan would have won his case with God, and God’s counsel would not have stood.

The Seed of the woman truly bruised in the heel; even bruised far more terribly than prophecy would lead one to expect; bruised unto the death; bruised unto the depths of hell; bruised unto the curse in the second death; but thereby also the second half of the Divine prophecy pitifully thwarted, and that wherein lay the comforting of God’s people, forever cut off.

And see, at this point the Resurrection of Christ enters in between. At this crossing of the roads of prophecy your risen Savior appears before you. When you have come to this turn in God’s way, God’s angel meets you with a song of Immanuel Who overcame.

Picture it clearly to yourself, what in that grave of Jesus was at stake.

Satan is no imaginary being, but a truly existing, terrible mighty spirit, who has an entire host of spirits at his command. By the fall in Paradise, man, who had been commissioned to protect the garden against the approaches of Satan, had admitted this terrible power of Satan into this world, and had thereby created the possibility for Satan, of preparing the whole of our human race, with all its might and power, its gifts and talents, to be an instrument for himself, wherewith he would antagonize God’s work, attack God’s people and destroy the counsel of God.

And, that power of Satan in our race was not imaginary, but operated and fermented and bred in all the life of the nations and in the personal life and in the passions of the human heart. Till even in Israel that power of Satan had penetrated. Throughout almost all the ages you see Israel run after Baal, or serve the calves, or bend the knee to Moloch and Ashteroth.

Almost every power of the world organizes itself into a well-ordered power, that stands inimically over against God. So do the philosophers in their science; the artists in their temple of art; the priests at their altars; the legislators in their enactments; the kings in their government; the generals at the head of their legions; all people in their chase after money and sensual pleasure; every child of man in the impure passions of his heart.

And in against that power God must make true His promise; render His people capable of bearing arms and keep them standing; and cause His Immanuel to appear at the root of Israel, and by that Immanuel bring the miracle to pass, to remain spotless in His holiness, and yet to atone all the sins of His people.

And the Lord shows His mightiness; He knows and calls His own; He plants in Abraham the noble vine of Israel.

The Lord goes on.

When necessary the flood, that saves Noah alone, is His instrument. Sodom and Gomorrah He overturns and rains on them fire and brimstone. At the Red Sea He controls Pharaoh and his riders. And however much in Israel apostacy gets the upperhand everytime again, yet He knows His faithful ones, and throughout all ages He has seven thousand who continue to call upon His name.

And now it comes at last.

Bethlehem is baptized in the gleams of the eternal light. The Babe rests in Mary’s arms. Immanuel is come.

The world does not observe it, and even in Israel there are but a few who believe; but Satan knows it, and the demons tremble at that dreadful knowledge.

Hence from this moment on all Satan’s art and purpose is, to risk himself with that Immanuel in a conflict of life and death.

Now is the hour of decision. Now it must be made out, whether he shall win in the end, or … the by-him-so-deeply-hated God.

This you trace already in Bethlehem’s massacre of the innocents, and in the flight to Egypt. You see it more clearly when Jesus is tempted of him in the wilderness. But it appears in full light first, when it is evident that it must come to a fight in the open, and Jesus appears in Israel as Prophet, presently as Priest and King, and it must be shown who is the stronger.

Never have demons broken loose indeed as during the three years of tension between heaven and hell. Never has there been among a people so many possessed. Never has the wickedness, treachery and baseness of the human heart been in evidence so terribly, as in what you may call the three year’s passion-history of the Son of man.

They know Him the demons; and they say it openly that He is the Son of David and Israel’s Messiah; but by that saying they stir up the evil passions in Israel against Him; till at length almost the whole people, with their priests and leaders at their head, rise up against Him, and everything calls for His blood; and Barabbas, the murderer, by the loud calls of the bloodthirsty multitudes, is chosen above Jesus.

And indeed this evil plan succeeds. For Jesus does nothing in return. Seemingly He runs of Himself and of His own initiative into the jaws of destruction. Instead of continuing to hide in Galilee, He goes of Himself to Jerusalem. Judas, whose inner thoughts He had long read, He allows to remain in His company. He goes up to the temple. If you will, He provokes the Pharisees and spares the priests in no particular.

He does nothing to escape. Just before His arrest He still shows what power is His, when He causes the soldiers to fall backward. But that power, which is at His service, He does not use.

Willingly He allows Himself to be bound, and as a Lamb He goes to the slaughter.

That, Satan did not understand.

He had willed that Jesus should offer resistance, should fight back, should retaliate; even Peter he tempted to draw the sword, and therewith after the manner of men to fight for Jesus.

But Jesus does not want this. He wills to die. And when Satan entertains still one more fear, even the fear that Jesus shall come down from the Cross and upset all his plan, this too does not happen; it does not take place however much he lets Jesus be taunted by the priests, and however much they say: “If thou art the Son of God, come down from the cross.”

So Jesus goes under, and Satan actually celebrates his victory, and hell its triumph.

For Satan knew no more terrible power than Death. Against every other instrument man had found defence; but not against Death. No one could face Death. To Death every one had to pay his toll. And since now it had come so far, that Jesus also had been conquered by that Death, Satan deemed himself certain of his victory.

God had been beaten back. He, Satan, had triumphed!

But now the mightiness of the Lord comes in between. More still, now it had to step in between. Now or never it must be made out and decided, whether there was power in God also against death; and whether Immanuel, even though He had been cast into Death, could nevertheless be saved and brought back from that Death.

And this is the glory of Easter; this the eternal jubilation of Jesus’ resurrection, that then, at that decisive moment, God’s mightiness has appeared, and the exceeding greatness of the strength of His Divine power has been exhibited, to liberate His Immanuel even from the bands of Death, and with divine majesty to snatch Satan’s booty away from him.

To snatch it away, not by taking up the soul of Jesus into heaven. That could take place after the dying. No, but by bringing back from Death the Immanuel, the Incarnated Word in that Flesh; to make known unto Him the way of life; and to bring about that His Holy One should not see corruption.

And this took place on the third morning. When the watchers fled, and God’s angels descended, and the stone was rolled away, and He Who had so recently died on the Cross appeared again in the midst of His disciples, and showed them the marks of the nails in His hands, and the wound of the spear in His side.

For over against this, Satan stood entirely helpless.

Against this, no single instrument had been prepared for Satan.

He had to look on and see it. See it in its far reaching results with respect to his own lot and the future of heaven and earth.

Now God had conquered, and potentially Satan had forever been beaten back.

Now the hour could be foretold and the moment be anticipated, when for once and for always his head should be bruised.

For though now Satan is still alive and still heavily armored, and though great power is still left him, to disturb God’s church and God’s children, yet God’s faithful ones no longer fear.

For see, whenever Satan attacks them again, there always stands between him and their heart that risen Savior, Who having received all power in heaven and on earth, and seated at the right hand of the Father, continually calls out to His own: “No one can pluck you out of My hand!”

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