God did not create physical defects. “God saw all that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” So why was this man deaf and mute? Why is it that infirmities and diseases also afflict people today? And why is it that eventually our life will end in death? It’s not because God lied when he described his creation as very good. He did indeed create perfect people and put them into a perfect world. But all that changed when man allowed sin into this world. With sin comes death, and all the afflictions that go along with it.

Not surprisingly, the sinful mind does not agree with this. That which is always hostile to God is quick to blame God for the physical afflictions that plague us in this world, often accusing him of acting unfairly towards us.

I agree that God treats his people unfairly, but not when he allows us to suffer. God’s unfairness reveals itself in this, that he uses our afflictions to remind us that because this sin-ruined life is not the life he desires for us, we need him to deliver us from its evils by bringing us safely into his heavenly kingdom. This is what his miracles, including the one here, foreshadowed—that our Lord can and will restore to everyone who believes in him the perfect life that he created for man in the beginning.

Still, it would be foolish to ignore the present reality of which this man’s physical afflictions remind us: that with sin comes suffering; and not only in this life, but forever, without measure, in the life to come. And also in that reality our Lord wants us to view this miracle.

It’s true that his healing of this deaf-mute was an act of compassion, and he who delivered him from his physical afflictions has in many ways and at many times also delivered us from ours. But what we sinners really need is for our Lord to perform a miracle of even greater compassion. Since, “Whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life,” we need him to open our sin-plugged ears, “For how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?”

But you say, you can hear God’s words as they are read to you from before this Altar and then preached to you from this pulpit. In fact, you’re hearing them right now. To that I reply, it’s one thing to hear God’s words; it’s a whole different matter to hear the Word which God through those words is proclaiming.

The Children of Israel provided a perfect example of this. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two Tablets of Testimony in his hands and read those words to these people, which included this, the first of his Ten Commandments: “You shall have no other gods before Me,” they replied, “All the words which the Lord has said we will do.” Yet not even one month later, they fashioned a golden calf and worshiped it. So while they heard the words of the Lord from the mouth of Moses, sin had plugged their ears, so that they did not—indeed, could not—hear the Word those words were proclaiming.

Are we any different? Hardly. The fact that we, after hearing God’s words in his Service, go out into the world and sin with this world is clear proof that sin often renders us as deaf as it did the Children of Israel.

But fear not, dear Christian. Because, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God,” the miracle your Lord performed on this deaf-mute, he performed in an even greater and far more compassionate way on you.

Because he could not hear, Jesus took this man aside and preached to him by means of sign language. He put his finger into his ear to show him where he was going to work his miracle. Then he spit to inform him that this miracle would be worked by what would issue forth from his mouth. After that, he touched his tongue as a sign that the impediment in his speech would be removed when his ears were opened. And having explained these things to him through sign language, Jesus then spoke. “Ephphatha,” he said in Aramaic, which means, “Be opened.” And “immediately his ears were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was loosed, and he spoke plainly.”

Of course, this should come as no surprise to us who are acquainted with Holy Scripture. God always chooses to work through his Word. In the beginning he spoke, and all things came into existence out of nothing. During a fierce storm on the Sea of Galilee Jesus, the Son of God, spoke to the wind and the waves, and there was complete calm. He also spoke to demons that had possessed a person’s body and they fled, to diseases, and they left; even to death, and the deceased came back to life.

So when the Lord touched your ears with his words, you were blessed with faith to hear his Word. You believe that though you have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, you are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that comes in Jesus Christ. You believe that Baptism is not simple water only, but Water, which connected with his almighty Word, washes sins away. You believe that the Word of Absolution, which you hear after you confess your sins in true repentance, is not the word of your pastor, but the Word of your Lord speaking through your pastor. And when you hear me chant the words of Christ’s Last Will and Testament—“Take and eat. This is my Body, which is given for you... Drink of it, all of you. This cup is the New Testament in my Blood, which is shed for you”—you believe that what appears to be only bread is in fact Christ’s Body united by his almighty Word to that bread for you to eat, and what appears to be only wine is in fact Christ’s Blood united by that same almighty Word to the wine for you to drink, for the forgiveness of your sins.

And with your ears miraculously opened to hear and so to believe the Word that his words proclaim, your tongue is loosed, and you are able to confess, as did this astonished crowd, but with a spiritual understanding they never had: “He has done all things well. He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

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