https://app.dropwave.io/episode/00a4e3ee-7e6b-4d28-8a40-3aba55f0ce37/oculi-lent-3-ad-2025.mp3

++ JESU JUVA ++

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Blessed is the man who hears the Word of God. This is the greatest thing: God talks. We listen. His Word persuades us what is true. We speak these wholesome words back to Him in prayer, praise, and giving thanks. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

Everything is ordered and sanctified by the Word of God and prayer. That is, everything is sanctified by God speaking to you in His Word and by your response — speaking back to God what He has said to you.

What do you suppose happens if you’re silent? What happens if you silence God’s Word? Since the beginning of Lent, we have heard about our Lord’s battle against the devil. This is not an imaginary fight.

Satan and his demons are real. We have given into the idea that he’s not really that dangerous. But he is real. And he has power. Not the kind of power that makes him into an evil god that is the true God’s opposite. He does not have as much power as God.

He hates God. He hates what God has made. He hates all that is good and holy and right and true. So that even from the creation, the devil has despised man as the crown of God’s creation. Yet, because Satan does not have the same power that God does, he cannot simply snatch Adam and his wife to become his subjects.

He attacks them through persuasion. He gains their attention. He entices them away from God’s Word to listen to his voice instead. He convinces them to eat.

Adam’s job was to teach his wife the Word of God about the tree in the middle of the garden. This Word of God told them of something called ‘evil.’ Evil is not a ‘thing’ in itself, but a distortion of what is good.

Adam and his wife lived in a perfect world. They could not go and see ‘evil’ locked up and put on display. They had no knowledge of evil. That means they had to believe what God’s Word told them about it: that it existed. that it sought their harm. that to partake of it meant their death.

So, the church fathers teach us, that Adam and his wife would go to where God had attached His Word. There, Adam would tell his wife what God had told him about the tree: Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. Adam would call his wife to believe this Word of God. He would explain that God is trustworthy — that He had given them life and health and all things good. — that they lived by God’s Word alone.

Then Adam and his wife would confess together what God had said. They would confess with their lips by repeating His Word. They would praise His Word by singing about it. They would confess with their bodies by keeping their hands from touching the fruit. By God’s Word and preaching — by gladly hearing and learning it, they would keep the Sabbath.

But one day everything changed. They stood by the tree. They engaged in the outward activity that looked like worship. Perhaps they even thought about God’s Word.

But that day, the sound of God’s Word did not permeate the air. The preacher had no sermon. He did not preach God’s Word. He did not apply that Word to their life. He was silent. Adam’s silence was an invitation for someone else to speak.

The serpent abhorred a vacuum. The devil spoke. He filled the air with something that sounded kind of like God’s Word. And he turned the assertion of God into a question. Did God really say? The question hangs in the air — begging for a response. Now Adam’s wife abhors the vacuum. She can’t let the question go unanswered. Suddenly she is engaged in a theological conversation that will mean her death.

The conversation didn’t seem that bad at first. It was just a dialogue. a conversation. a negotiation. We’re not really going to do what the devil says, but what can it hurt to let him speak his mind? Adam’s silence is the invitation for evil to speak.

The evil one speaks God’s Word in a disordered and twisted way, mangling it until it bears no resemblance to God’s Word. He uses reason and cunning to convince them that God’s Word is unreasonable and foolish. He spreads poison on God’s Word, making it appear toxic and dangerous.

So instead of delighting in God’s Word and resisting the devil, Adam’s wife delights in something else: the appearance of the deadly fruit. She thought the devil’s word sounded godly. It sounded like something she thought should be included in the Bible.

Easily and rapidly, they are deceived. She gives to her husband, and he eats, too. With a heaping spoonful of the devil’s sugar-flavored lies, the forbidden fruit goes down. They didn’t recognize the danger until they were looking at the shame of their own nakedness. Now they are willing partners with the devil.