Who makes the deaf, the mute & the blind?

Today I want us to look at our concept of incapacity.

We have an incredible ability to excuse ourselves, to rationalize what we can & cannot do.  If we’re codependent we do the same for others, always a reason for their behavior or lack thereof.  The Bible has a very strong word for us today on our perceived inabilities.

You remember Moses?  If you do not know about Moses you need to borrow someone’s Bible & read Exodus 1-4.  He was supposed to be murdered as soon as he was born; rough start.  He was hidden away as a secret for 3 months before he was thrown into a river.  He was rescued but then raised into adulthood by adoptive parents who weren’t of his same race & by one who later tried to kill him.  His whole life was surrounded by murder & eventually he too became a murderer.  Then he ran from the law of the land.  He finally had gotten settled into his new life when this happened…

Exodus 3, from the second book of the Bible, verses 1-10.
 

Let’s pause & look at those first ten verses.

They tell us Moses was married.  His father-in-law was a professional religious man; it said Jethro was a priest, and Moses worked for him, but not in a religious occupation.  He had a down & dirty kind of job, probably like you & me when we work.  And this particular job led him into a wilderness.  While he was there he had what you & I would call a hallucination if we didn’t know any better.  He saw something burning that was somehow not being destroyed by the fire.  So curiosity drove him to it & then the ‘hallucination’ became auditory & personal.  Has anyone in here been diagnosed with schizophrenia?  Anyone know someone close who is?  Meet Moses.  Today we might have called him that.

Back to the passage, God speaks & identifies his presence as making things holy, or set apart.  Then he identifies his history with Moses specifically.  He immediately tells Moses who Moses was from birth.  Remember Moses was only uniquely with his birth family for 3 months.  God looked at a man who was in his 3rd identity and told him he'd known him from his first, actually before his first because he says I knew your parents and your parents' parents back 500+ years.
 

Moses then had 2 responses that are fairly easy to understand.

1.      He was afraid.             2. He hid.

The text actually says he was afraid to look at God which means that he believed the voice in the fire in front of him was God.

As an aside, if you haven’t already, whenever you do have an encounter with God, the one true God (not all the demons you’ve been worshiping in your life whether you know it or not), you will feel as Moses must have felt here – which is known, a beautiful & yet fearful thing, being known.  And the spirit inside of you who was created by that same God will recognize its maker.

Verse 6 says “Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.”  Later in Moses’ life, after decades of diligently seeking to know the God that knew him, he eventually asked to see God’s glory.  At that point Moses in effect wanted to see the face of God.  If the story of Moses really catches your interest you can read about that yourself when you get to chapter 33.  I’ll let you think about those two different desires on those two different life timelines & how they might relate to your life.

Back to our passage today, God then says, I’ve heard & seen the suffering & it’s time for deliverance.

There is a time for everything & it’s not always time for deliverance.  But if you’re miserable & crying out, this passage clearly tells us in verse 7, God is concerned.  He’s not unfaithful to you or your family when your life or lives are difficult.  Seek him & when it’s the right time, he will come.  If you want to know more about that – read the Psalms.

Verse 11, “But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should… (dot dot dot)”  Moses said specifically in this case, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh & bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

What was God’s response to this identity confused runaway murderer?

Verse 12, “And God said, ‘I will be with you.’”

See that’s the answer to all our concerns about our perceived inadequacies.  Nothing is reliant on us.  We’re called to know & obey the all-powerful, all-sufficient God.

Was Moses convinced?  Let’s read the bulk of our passage, chapter 3 verse 13 through chapter 4 verse 9.

Moses brings a question, “Suppose this…, what then?’  God answers it, then he answers it some more.  He even prophesies to Moses the whole run-down of the process as it will unfold in history.

Enough for Moses?  No.  He simply moves on to his next ‘what if…’

God again answers, this time with ‘magic’, three times over.  With each question he seems to meet Moses’ concern with a fuller answer than the question Moses asked.

So now Moses shifts his focus from others’ potential negative responses back to his own perceived inability.

Verse 10, “Moses said to the Lord, ‘…I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant.  I am slow of speech & tongue.”’

He tells God, perhaps like we do as well, basically, “I’ve always been broken & I still am.”

The Lord’s response to Moses’ & our own pathetic arguments & complaints present some of the most difficult concepts in the whole of Scripture.  Listen closely.

Verses 11 and 12. “The Lord said to him, ‘Who gave man his mouth?  Who makes him deaf or mute?  Who gives him sight or makes him blind?  Is it not I, the Lord?  Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.’”

I don’t know about you, but I struggle to understand that God, my God, the same God of the Bible can say without argument or any seeming difficulty:

            I made the deaf.

            I made the mute.

            I made the blind.

I see those as handicaps & so somehow less than God, maybe at times, even evil.  But yet here it is, so clearly pronounced in Scripture – to paraphrase, God says “your perceived ‘handicap’ is not without my sovereignty, even design & when I call you, you follow me regardless of your feelings of brokenness.  I am enough.  I am sufficient.  I am all you & anyone else need.”

My husband & I are 3 months pregnant.  How are we to understand this passage?  How?; just as it is written.  When my friends ask me, “do you want a boy or girl?”  And I smile & say “it doesn’t matter.”  They respond, “of course not, all you want is healthy.”  This passage tells me that even our concept of ‘healthy’ is not the goal.

So if you have been told you are or you feel unhealthy, insufficient, broken, handicapped, inadequate, even sinful & you’re full of excuses, God’s answer to you is ‘I AM’ & ‘I WILL’ & as history tell us with Moses & the rest of the story, God’s end of the equation is more than enough.

I ask you the same question I ask myself every day, “Will you obey him?”  I pray your response is the only appropriate response to God, “Yes.”