1. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The message from God’s Word today as we observe All Saints’ Day is taken from Psalm 149, it’s entitled, “Salvation & Judgment-God’s Work of Making All Things New,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. Anyone who has ever remodeled a kitchen knows the awkward truth about it. Before you get the beautiful new countertops, somebody has to take a sledgehammer to the old ones. The demolition is loud, dusty, and a little terrifying, especially when it's your house. But nobody in the middle of that mess says, "The sledgehammer is my enemy." They say, "The sledgehammer is the road to the kitchen I want." Today, on All Saints' Day, our psalm hands us a sledgehammer, and a sword besides, and invites us to see how God tears down in order to build up.
3. Psalm 149 seems to be two psalms stitched together. Verses 1–5 are pure delight: "Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song." God's people are glad in their Maker, dancing and singing on their beds, for "the Lord takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with salvation" (v. 4). Then comes verse 6, and the mood changes. "Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands, to execute vengeance on the nations and punishments on the peoples." Praise in one breath, swords in the next. Many scholars have squirmed over this, and honestly, so do we. It sounds out of place in the church. And yet the Holy Spirit placed it here, and God's Word does not need us to sand down its sharp edges. So we ask what we always ask of the Old Testament: where is Christ in this psalm? Jesus himself told us to look, "You search the Scriptures... and it is they that bear witness about me" (John 5:39).
4. When we look, we find that salvation and judgment are never far apart in the Bible. In the days of Noah, the flood was God's judgment on a world drowning in violence (Gen 6:5–7), and in that same water, eight souls were carried safely in the ark (1 Peter 3:20). At the Red Sea, the waters that closed over Pharaoh's army were the very waters Israel walked through on dry ground (Ex 14:21–31). One event, two sides: judgment for the enemy, deliverance for the people. And the greatest of these is the cross. There God's judgment on sin fell in full, and it fell on his own Son. "The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isa 53:6). Christ took the judgment; you received the forgiveness. At Calvary, God's justice and God's mercy did not compete. They met. So when we read Psalm 149 with Christ at the center, we expect to find both, and we do.
5. Now look again at those two-edged swords. They are not the weapons of a crusade. Remember what Paul says of the church's armor: "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God" (Eph 6:17). And Hebrews tells us that this Word is "living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword" (Heb 4:12). The swords in the hands of ancient Israel's soldiers pointed ahead to the sword that is placed in our hands: not steel, but the proclaimed Word. "The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds" (2 Cor 10:4). So praise and the sword do belong together, because praising God means telling out his mighty deeds, and that telling is exactly what God uses to do his work. Every time we confess the Creed, sing a hymn, read a Psalm, or speak Christ to a neighbor, the sword is drawn.
6. That sword cuts, and it cuts first on us. Our Lord says, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Matt 16:24). The Word asks hard questions. What have your eyes looked at that they should have turned from? What have your lips said that you wish you could take back? Where have your feet carried you that you knew you should not go? The Word does not flatter us; it exposes us. It strips away our excuses and our habit of blaming the person next to us. But the sword that wounds is the same sword that heals, because the Word that shows us the depth of our sin shows us something deeper still: "Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more" (Rom 5:20). Your sin was nailed to the cross with Christ. It is dead, and you are forgiven.
7. This is what we receive in Baptism, where the sword and the water work together. "We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life" (Rom 6:4). Every baptism is a funeral and a birth at once. The Small Catechism puts it plainly: the Old Adam in us "should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever." Here is the trouble: the old Adam is a very good swimmer. He keeps floating back up. So each day we go back to our Baptism, we confess, we hear the absolution, and down he goes again, while the new man, clothed with Christ (Gal 3:27), rises and is strengthened. That is the ministry of the Word in the life of every believer. It kills in order to make alive. As Paul says, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come" (2 Cor 5:17). Demolition, and then the new kitchen.
8. Now we can go back to the frightening words of verses 7–9: vengeance, punishments, binding, judgment. If we hear these in the light of the cross, they change. Vengeance belongs to the Lord (Rom 12:19), and in his hands it is not a temper tantrum but the setting right of what has gone wrong. In the cross, Christ makes right what sin has made wrong. "Punishments" can also be rendered "rebukes" or "corrections," the same word behind "the Lord reproves him whom he loves" (Prov 3:12). God's correction is not cruelty; it is a Father's love. The "binding" of nobles with fetters echoes the keys Christ has given his church: "Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Matt 18:18; John 20:23). To the unrepentant we say, as God's Word says, that your sin remains. To the penitent we say, in the stead and by the command of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you are forgiven. And "the judgment written" is the verdict of God's Word that "the wages of sin is death" (Rom 6:23), spoken so that sinners will run to the One who says, "the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
9. That is the work the church militant is still doing, and it is the work that links us to the church triumphant. Today we give thanks for the saints who have finished their course. John sees them: "a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne" in white robes washed "in the blood of the Lamb" (Rev 7:9, 14). Think of that: robes made white by blood. That is salvation and judgment together, again. And they are our own. The ones we have lost are not lost. They are with the Lamb, who "will be their shepherd... and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes" (Rev 7:17). We still struggle on this side, but we are one church with them, united in Christ. "Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him" (1 John 3:2).
10. And notice who Jesus calls blessed on this day: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matt 5:3–6). These are not the strong, but the emptied, and these are the saints. You, too, are one of them, a saint not by your own strength but by the blood of the Lamb and the washing of your Baptism. So lift up the praises of God, and keep the sword of the Word in hand. Speak it in your homes, to your children, and to the neighbor who needs it. When it wounds, know that it wounds to heal. When it kills, know that it kills to make alive. Even in his judgments, our God is merciful, and even in his chastening there is grace to strengthen faith and renew life. Therefore, with the psalmist and with all the saints above and below, "Praise the Lord!" Amen. And now the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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