The Lutheran Hour

"Making Sense"

#78-30
Presented on The Lutheran Hour on April 3, 2011
Speaker: Rev. Ken Klaus
Copyright 2025 Lutheran Hour Ministries

Text: John 9:1-3

Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! In a world filled with sin’s darkness,
the resurrection message brings God’s light and hope. This day, to all who are
pained or in pain, the living Lord Jesus comes. To you He says, the reign of
the devil, death, and sin are at an end. My blood-bought victory guarantees
yours. God grant such a triumph to us all. Amen.

On March 30, 1974, the first episode of the TV program Little House On the
Prairie went on the air. I have to be honest; our young family watched that
program. We watched, at least in part, because we were living a hop-skip-and-
a-jump away from where the real events were supposed to have taken place. For
those of you who don’t know, the show was very loosely based on one of the
best-selling books by Laura Ingalls Wilder… more specifically, the book
which covered the years when the Ingalls family lived, maybe I should say,
when the family struggled to live in Walnut Grove, Minnesota.

If you read the Little House books, you will agree life was a struggle for
that family. On the other hand, if you watch the television program, you
cannot help but come away with the feeling that troubled Job was a lucky
lottery winner when compared to the Ingalls family. In the TV program, Pa
Ingalls was supposed to be a farmer. “Supposed to be” is right. I can’t recall
a single planting season when that man managed to bring in a harvest. One year
the crop was destroyed by drought, the next was wiped out by a flood, and yet
another was leveled by hail. The grasshoppers took care of one year’s produce.
I’m firmly convinced that if the program had gone a few years more, the
Ingalls family would have had volcanoes erupting in their back 40 and comets
would have descended upon their fields and burned the crops the day before
they were to have been brought in. Through all the catastrophes, Pa kept
playing his fiddle and his children kept dancing and Ma, well Ma just smiled.

Now maybe the Ingalls family were able to keep their positive outlook on life
because they had a television hidden away in their barn and every week they
gathered together to watch another program, a program called The Waltons.
Watching the pitiful plight of the Waltons might have made the Ingalls family
feel they had it made in the shade. The story line revolved around the Walton
family which lived during the Great Depression at the foot of a mountain in
Virginia. Residing in the Walton farm house were Ma and Pa, Grandma and
Grandpa, and somewhere around 40 to 50 of the Walton children. Like the
Ingalls family, the Waltons also found themselves beset by pains, plagues,
problems, and pestilence, trials, troubles, temptations, and terrible
tribulations.

For years, millions of people watched those programs. For years, they laughed
and cried and became personally involved with the story lines of the
characters. For years, they applauded the resiliency of those fictional
families who stood firm in the face of hardship and harder times. That was how
people responded to those programs, but it’s not necessarily the way they
react to personal difficulties which came uninvited to their doorsteps. You
see, it’s one thing to smile at the difficulties of TV characters, and it’s
quite another to deal successfully with evils which have your name on them.
When those evils come, you want to know “Why?” Why have I been singled out to
carry a cross?

How do you make sense of things when the doctor says, “cancer”? How do you
make sense of things when a stroke or an accident leaves you with some
permanent disability? How do you and those around you make sense of things
when what you thought was normal forgetfulness is diagnosed as Alzheimer’s?
How do you make sense of things when a flood or fire destroys not only your
home, but also takes the many precious and special photos, keepsakes, and
papers which you can never replace? How do you make sense of things when a
drunk driver without a license and with 23 citations takes the life of a
grandchild?

You will want to make sense of things when you lose your job and less worthy
candidates keep theirs; you will want to make sense of things when your
special son or darling daughter is killed while serving in the military while
the local drug pusher is alive and well and is making a fortune selling dope
to children. On these occasions, as well as many others, you will look to the
heavens and cry out: “Lord, tell me why this terrible thing, this seemingly
unjust thing has happened?” “Explain to me, just what it is I have done to
deserve this?” It is a fair question and that question is addressed again and
again throughout Scripture. Today I’d like you to look at just one of those
passages: the ninth chapter of John.

The story begins with Jesus and His disciples passing by a man who had been
born blind. As they go, Jesus’ disciples try to make sense of such a sad
situation. They ask, “Teacher, whose sin caused this man to be born blind? Was
it his sin, or has he had this burden because of something his parents did?”
In their desire to make sense of the universe the disciples assume every
action has an equal and opposite reaction. Since Newton wouldn’t be born for
another 1600 years he hadn’t as yet formulated his Third Law of Motion. Even
so the disciples’ mothers had raised no dummies. They could put two-and-two
together. They knew the sun followed an orderly course as it went across the
heavens; they had seen the waxing and waning of the moon. They knew the
universe was an orderly place and in this orderly universe it seemed logical
that sin “A” would call for punishment “B.”

Now I need you to understand, this kind of thinking is not confined to a time
long ago and far away. It’s not a position which is held only by those who are
silly, superstitious, or uneducated. You may remember, it wasn’t too many
years ago that some ministers got up in their pulpits and they pounded away
and pronounced AIDS to be a Divine punishment solely upon the homosexual
community. They were preaching: sin “A” deserves punishment “B”. When they
heard that preaching, a lot of folks agreed. They kept agreeing until they
were confronted by the cases of children who had been infected with the
disease at birth or through a transfusion.

Sin “A” deserves punishment “B.” How many times have you not seen the evening
news interview some folks who have been touched by a natural disaster like a
flood, a fire, a tornado, a hurricane, an earthquake? When those folks look at
their homes which have been reduced to ashes or toothpicks and their adjacent
neighbors’ places stand untouched and unscathed, don’t they think it is was
just a little bit unjust on the Deity’s part to have selected them for such a
dubious and doubtful honor? Don’t their safe and secure neighbors do the same
when they say, “The Lord spared us.” That, of course, means God had it in for
the folks whose lives have been leveled. Both groups are trying to make sense
of things and both groups have wrongly concluded sin “A” has deserved
punishment “B.”

If you think the idea is silly, then talk to a survivor. Talk to the one
person who survives a plane crash, a boat sinking, a combat mission, a house
fire, a car accident. Talk to them and most will tell you they feel incredible
guilt because they’re still here. They think it’s not right for them to still
be walking and talking and breathing and thinking and loving. They don’t
deserve to live. Because they’re no better than anybody else, they ought to be
dead like everybody else. Sin “A” deserves punishment “B”.

Now, if you’re trying to make sense of things and you don’t believe in a God,
you do run into a bit of a problem here. I mean, if you don’t believe that the
Universe had a Creator and you don’t believe that He still takes care of what
He has made and you can’t convince yourself that He is remotely interested in
you, well, you have no other choice but to conclude that life is just one big
roll of the dice. Coincidence, chance, happenstance, moira, kismet, fate.
Everything that happens is a bit of good luck or bad luck. If the earth opens
up and swallows you, you’d expect your friends to say, ‘Oh Friend, that is a
bit of bad luck for you, isn’t it?” If you don’t believe in the Triune God,
I’m not exactly sure what I can say… other than… it has to be very lonely,
very dark, and very gloomy to… believe as you do. To have a creation without
a Creator; laws without a law-Giver; order without Someone to establish that
order. How bitter, or fatalistic, or both you must be when the fates deal you
a bad hand. Oh, that’s right, you probably don’t believe in the fates either.

But I’ve wandered. The question was, “How can I make sense of life? How can I
figure things out?” Let’s go back to Jesus and His disciples. They had just
passed by a man who had been born blind and the disciples wanted to know whose
sin had caused the man’s loss of vision. Jesus’ reply was a simple one. He
said, ‘In this case neither the parents nor the man have committed a special
or specific sin which caused this man’s blindness.’ In other words, sin “A”
hadn’t brought about punishment “B”. Now, you should know there are times when
sin does have direct and related consequences. When Adam and Eve ate from the
fruit of the forbidden tree, sin and death entered the world. That was a
direct consequence of their disobedience. Scripture shares the same lesson
many times over. But in all the examples I can think of, God had previously
given a warning, a prohibition against disobeying His will. He had, very
plainly, told His people that if they do this wrong thing, they would suffer
certain consequences. Which means, if they did that wrong thing, which they
frequently did, they shouldn’t have been surprised when God doled out a
punishment.

In our world sin can also, occasionally, produce some direct consequences. We
all know a child can be born with an addiction because his or her parents’
used the wrong drugs. We know fatal car accidents can occur when someone
drinks and drives. We know sexually transmitted diseases are spread when
someone has wandered from the path of purity. In these cases sin “A” has
indeed produced punishment “B”. Of course, in all those cases, it is the
innocent who are punished for the sins of another. In many of those cases, the
innocent will be left trying to make sense of things. They will ask, “Why me?”

On the other hand, in the vast majority of situations, it is a mistake to
think every transgression has a specific and directly related penalty. In the
case of the blind man, Jesus clearly stated that the man was not cursed
because he or his parents had done something particularly evil. No, this man
was born blind because he lived in a sinful world where blindness occasionally
occurs. Taking Jesus’ line of thinking one step further and to its final
conclusion: every pain and every problem; every sorrow, sadness, and sickness,
all despair, depression, discouragement, and despondency in the world is here
because sin is in the world.

Do you doubt it? Then let me ask: why is it every generation longs for peace
but every generation experiences war? Why do nations continue to fight against
each other; why do our young men and women continue to march off to kill and
be killed? Jesus answers: “This happens because sin is in the world.” Dear
friend, when you watch the evening news, is your heart not moved by those who
live in squalor and starvation; are you not touched by the plight of those who
are languishing and dying because they do not have the most basic of medical
care? Are you not pained by the people who are homeless; who are sick; who are
alone? In this you are not alone. So, why is it, if we are all saddened by
these things, why do they still exist? It is a question which has been
addressed by deep-thinking philosophers, great ideologies, and powerful
governments. They have done what they can, all they can, but inequities
remain. They remain because sin remains.

Anyone who reads the paper; who listens to the news on the radio; who watches
the day’s events on television cannot help but be convinced of humankind’s
helplessness to eliminate the consequences of sin. The world turns its
attention, brings to bear its resources on one troubled, war-torn spot in the
world; governments do all they can to cobble together some sort of shaky peace
and while they’re doing so conflicts break out in five other places. Science
makes advances against cancer and the rate of heart disease increases. No
matter what we do, evil remains a constant. My friend, look within your heart.
This broadcast reaches people who live in some of the richest countries the
world has ever seen… but how many of you can say the riches, the mechanical
conveniences, the toys, the relative security we enjoy has brought us
happiness and contentment? Discontent remains because sin remains.

It is precisely because sin is with us, and within us, Jesus, God’s Son, our
Savior came into this world. Scripture records how He was conceived by the
Holy Spirit and had the Virgin Mary as His mother. He was born true Man
because, if He were to take our place, He had to be One of us; if He were to
face temptation, He had to be One of us; if He were to experience death and
grave, He had to be One of us. But Jesus was also the Son of God. He had to be
God because only God’s Son could hope to triumph over temptation; only God’s
Son could keep the Commandments; only God’s Son could defeat death. True Man
and True God, Jesus came to take our place; to offer His life as a ransom to
save ours; to die so that we might live.

It was a grand thing, a glorious thing, a gracious goal which brought Jesus
into this world. But, because the Redeemer was spurned, snubbed, and slighted,
it was also a sad and sorrowful thing. And it was also one other thing: Jesus’
work and mission was a successful thing. His glorious resurrection from the
dead says our mortal enemies, sin, death, and devil no longer are in complete
control of our ultimate fate and our eternal future. Because Jesus is risen
from the dead, we know that all who believe in Him will not perish but have
everlasting life. Because Jesus has risen, we know things in this world have
been changed… and if the Holy Spirit works faith in your heart, they are
changed in your life as well.

How changed? Well, for the blind man in our story, Jesus brought about
healing. What’s that? Did I hear you say, “But pastor there is still blindness
in this world. So, maybe Jesus didn’t bring about so much change after all”?
Is that what I heard you say? No, my friend, be assured, the change is there.
It is most definitely there. But so is sin and its sorrows. Jesus does heal…
in many ways He heals. To a few, like this blind man, He may restore sight…
and to others He gives the peace which says: “Any handicap this sinful world
still has will be banished in heaven from whence sin has also been exiled.” In
other words, Jesus gives to all the peace of God which passes all human
understanding.

And what does that mean? In our hymnal there is a verse which reads, “Blessed
assurance, Jesus is mine, oh what a foretaste of glory is mine.” The writer of
those words was a lady named Fanny Crosby. Because of a medical mistake, from
her earliest years Fanny Crosby was blind. Blind, but she could still see her
Savior most clearly. He gave her that blessed assurance, even as He has given
it to so many others, which is why, at the age of eight, at the age of eight,
Fanny Crosby wrote: “Oh, what a happy child I am, although I cannot see. I am
resolved that in this world, contented I will be. How many blessings I enjoy
that other people don’t. To weep and sigh because I’m blind, I cannot and I
won’t!”

Has Jesus conquered sin? He did for that woman… He did for that blind man…
and He can for you. Which is why we say, if we can help you, if we can answer
your questions, if we can help share the Savior’s peace with you, please, do
not hesitate, call us at The Lutheran Hour. Amen.

LUTHERAN HOUR MAILBOX (Questions & Answers) for April 3, 2011
Topic: Looking for a Sign from God

Announcer: Should you look for a sign from God? That’s our question today. I’m
Mark Eischer, here with our Speaker Emeritus, Pastor Ken Klaus.

Klaus: Thank you, Mark. Good to be here.

Announcer: A listener writes, “My wife and I were both raised in the Lutheran
Church and we continue to be members of a Lutheran congregation. As such, I
feel we are pretty well-grounded in what the Bible teaches.”

Klaus: And that’s always good to hear.

Announcer: He continues, “I had to make a difficult decision in regard to my
business. We brought our concerns to the Lord in prayer. I felt quite
comfortable in praying, ‘Lord, Thy will be done.’ However, my wife seemed to
be looking for something more specific and directive from God.”

Klaus: The plot thickens…

Announcer: He goes on to say that his wife attends a non-denominational Bible
study with some of the other women in the neighborhood. They told her that she
should be looking for a specific sign from the Lord as to what they should be
doing. Our listener knows he should seek the Lord’s will. But is that the way
to do it?

Klaus: Interesting letter. Here we have two people, both of them Christians,
who are seeking to both know and do the Lord’s will. That’s commendable. But
they seem to be at loggerheads on how best to do that. And no matter which way
I answer this one, I’m going to hear from some people who are going to
strongly disagree with whatever I say.

Announcer: So, how would you answer this?

Klaus: Well, let me try to explain it this way: a few weeks ago I came back
from a speaking engagement in Chicago. Now, which road did the Lord want me to
take from Chicago to St. Louis? I-55 through Bloomington-Normal? Or I-57
through Champaign-Urbana?

Announcer: I’m sure the Bible does not speak to that issue.

Klaus: Good. Would you agree there are many situations in life which the Bible
does address?

Announcer: Does address? Sure. There are some things the Bible says we should
do, other things we shouldn’t. And there are other things in which the Bible
leaves us to our own judgment and common sense.

Klaus: Some of those things fall outside of God’s specific direction and
directive?

Announcer: Well, I think that would be true, to a certain extent-but not
beyond God’s knowledge or providence.

Klaus: As long as we remember certain things. First, we remember we should not
go against what the Lord commands. In this illustration, that means whichever
way I drive back, I should drive back in a Christian manner, obedient to my
Lord. By that I mean, I don’t drink and drive, I don’t speed, I don’t covet
and steal somebody else’s car, I don’t drive irresponsibly. That the Lord
would care about. But, all the other things being equal, He really doesn’t
have a preference on which route I take.

Announcer: Anything else to keep in mind?

Klaus: Absolutely. I shouldn’t forget that the Lord is also with me. Wherever
I go, whatever I do, the Lord is going to be there. If I drive one route, He
is there. If I drive the other route, the same is true, He’s there. Our
listener talked about leaving or staying in a business. Assuming that business
is not sinful, or in violation of God’s Law, in which business wouldn’t the
Lord be there to help and guide him?

Announcer: The Lord would be there either way.

Klaus: Exactly. Now, in regard to his wife’s looking for signs, as far as I
can tell, Scripture does speak of times when the Lord definitely gave signs to
His people. There could be no mistaking those signs: for example, when God
called Moses to lead His people, or when Gideon asked for a sign or two from
the Lord. But God doesn’t promise to send those signs to govern everything we
do in our daily activities.

Announcer: OK. Anything else?

Klaus: Yeah. One other thing in regard to signs. Generally, I’ve found those
people who claim to be governed by signs, they usually seem to find the Lord
gives them the things that they wanted to do in the first place! It’s sort of
like God, somehow, manages to come down on the side of what they wanted to do.

Announcer: All along.

Klaus: Yeah. In short, signs and their interpretation can often be a pretty
subjective thing. People see what they want to see.

Announcer: Thank you, Pastor Klaus. This has been a presentation of Lutheran
Hour Ministries.

Music selections for this program:

“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by John Leavitt. Concordia Publishing House/SESAC

“Return to the Lord” by Henry Gerike. From Blessed by the Concordia Seminary
Chorus (© 2000 Concordia Seminary Chorus) Concordia Publishing House/SESAC

“Come to Calvary’s Holy Mountain” arr. Henry Gerike. Used by permission.

“Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed” arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.

“When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” by Healey Willan. Concordia Publishing
House/SESAC