Sermon for November 2, 2025, All Saints' Day (Observed)

Psalm 149 (All Saints’ Day—Observed)

“The Blessings of the Saints”

Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, Enfield, CT

November 2, 2025

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Our text is the Psalm appointed for All Saints’, Psalm 149.

¹Praise Yahweh! Sing to Yahweh a new song, His praise in the assembly of the godly. ²Let Israel be glad in His Maker; let the sons of Zion rejoice in their King. ³Let them praise His name with dancing; with the tambourine and lyre let them sing praises to Him. ⁴For Yahweh takes pleasure in His people; He will glorify the afflicted with salvation. ⁵Let the godly exult in glory; let them sing for joy upon their beds. ⁶Let high songs of God be in their throats, and a two-edged sword in their hands, ⁷to execute vengeance on the nations, punishments upon the peoples, ⁸to bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron, ⁹to execute on them the judgment written. This is an honor for all His goldy ones. Praise Yahweh!

          I’m very glad that the Hymn of the Day is “For All the Saints Who from Their Labors Rest” and not “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Singing “For All the Saints” often brings a sweet and truly joyful tear as we remember loved ones who’ve gone to heaven before us with the seal of faith. There’s a beautiful Gospel comfort in the hymn that a New Orleans jazz number just doesn’t deliver. But Louis Armstrong and the boys get it right on this line: “Yes, I want to be in that number when the saints go marching in.” I want to be in that number! We want to be numbered with the saints!

          Our text in Psalm 149 takes a decidedly upbeat view of the saints on this All Saints’ Sunday because the saints of God are so blessed in this life and in the life of the world to come. Let’s look at some of those blessings promised to the saints that our text lays out, reasons we want to be numbered with the saints.

          The psalmist writes in verse 4, “For Yahweh takes pleasure in His people.” This applies not only to His Old Testament people but also to each one of you. The Lord takes pleasure in you. You make Him happy. Notice that it is not that you will make Him happy, someday, when you’re in heaven and don’t have sins, but rather that you make Him happy now. This is why Jesus died for you, to make you delightful and perfect by cleansing you from your sins with His blood.

Jesus, in His perfect life and sacrificial death, took your place before the judgment of God against sin. At His baptism in the Jordon River, Jesus identified Himself with us sinners, whose very sins He came to bear and take away from us with His cross and resurrection. At His baptism, the Father declared to Jesus, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11 ESV). Since we have been baptized into Christ Jesus, God has made us His own sons and daughters. Therefore, He says of you and me, “With you, I am well-pleased.” The Lord takes pleasure in you because of the saving work of His Son into whose death and resurrection you have been baptized, into whose family you have been adopted as sisters and brothers of the Lord Jesus.

We are next told that the Lord “will glorify the afflicted with salvation.” This glory does not yet belong to us fully. Our affliction might include all the suffering that we go through in this earthly life. But in the Old Testament, affliction most often indicates distress over one’s own sin and failures to be the people God desires us to be. It is the Law that afflicts or burdens us with a longing to be perfect now as God demands. Longing to be free from our constant sinning, we are just like the apostle Paul in Romans 7: “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am!” (Rom. 7:15-24 ESV).

As the Law shows us our sins, the Law afflicts us just as it did Paul. We are burdened by the Law, unable to free ourselves from its power. We feel our sins and long for relief. Jesus talks about this in today’s Gospel, in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matt. 5:6). It is true that Christians are, here and now, perfectly righteous through faith because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We are “justified by grace through faith,” declared not guilty of our sins on account of the blood of Christ. But Christians are not yet perfectly righteous in their lives they way they want to be. For that, we wait. Jesus said, “they shall be satisfied.” In heaven, we will be free of the constant and nagging affliction of our sinful flesh. We will be satisfied as we await the resurrection of our bodies on the Last Day. Until then, we hunger and thirst for this, waiting in hope.

This longing affliction, then, should not surprise us. The psalmist acknowledges it. Jesus teaches it. St. Paul lamented it. For now, we are the afflicted. But this blessing, “He will glorify the afflicted with salvation,” does presently apply to the saints in heaven. They are now free of bodily and worldly afflictions, awaiting the glorification of their bodies in the resurrection. But the greatest affliction from which they have been saved is the affliction of sinning. The old sinful nature in them has been drowned for the last time. Their sinful flesh doesn’t lure them. Satan and his evil angels cannot tempt them.

While they were communing with us at this altar rail, they were free from guilt by divine declaration. But now, at the heavenly banquet, they are free in fact. The psalmist describes this as being “glorified,” sometimes translated as being “beautified” or “adorned.” They have their robes washed in the blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ (Rev. 7:14). Take courage, for the present condition of the Church in glory, the saints in heaven, is our future hope as well!

It is their Lord and ours, Jesus, who makes all His saints joyful in our glorious standing. “Let the godly exalt in glory,” the psalmist says. We are honored and glorified by God in Jesus. Our Father in heaven speaks well of us in Christ. Again, in Jesus, God is pleased with us because we have received Jesus’ own righteousness by grace through faith. That is why a baptized man, woman, or child is called a saint, a holy one. We have been made holy in the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ through the Gospel Word and Baptism. Clothed in the robe of Christ’s righteousness, God honors us and will reveal His glory in us, as St. Paul writes in Romans 8, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18 ESV).

What’s more, the Lord makes His saints rest with singing: “Let them sing for joy upon their beds.” “Their beds” are where people return after their day’s work. We don’t always sing for joy on our beds now. We weep. Psalm 6, “I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping. My eye wastes away because of grief; it grows weak because of all my foes” (Psa. 6:6-7 ESV). These verses describe us, God’s saints, here in the Church Militant. We are in the world, but not of the world, carrying out God’s mission with our marching orders to make disciples by baptizing and teaching them in the name of Jesus. Made holy, cleansed, and forgiven, we nevertheless live under the cross in this life and bear the burdens of sin and its consequences, the burdens of persecution and troubles. But we look forward with joy to becoming the Church Triumphant as pictured in our First Reading from Revelation 7. “For all the saints, who from their labors rest.”  “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Rev. 7:14-17 ESV).

When we are in the new creation with our Lord Christ at His Coming, we will then be able to rest from our labors and troubles, but not from our singing and rejoicing. We will sing to God a new song, rejoicing in our Creator and Savior and King through His Spirit. “From earths wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast, Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host, Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: Alleluia! Alleluia!” With all the people of God from all times and all places, Christ, by His cross and resurrection, has numbered us with His saints in glory everlasting. Amen.