11-02-2025

“SAINTS NOW AND THEN”

Text: 1 John 3:1-3 – All Saints Day(Observed)

Sunday November 2nd, 2025

Trinity - Creston

       Grace, mercy, and peace is yours from God our Father and from our crucified and risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

       Our text for this All Saints Sunday is the Epistle Lesson –  1John 3:1-3 that was just proclaimed.

Let Us Pray:  Dearest Jesus, send your Holy Spirit to remind us that baptized into your saving work, we are your children and saints now! Amen.

Dear Fellow Redeemed in Christ:

Did you notice the title for today’s sermon? “Saints Now and Then.” The expression “now and then” usually means that something only happens occasionally, not regularly.

This may be the way we think about being saints. Every now and then, we get it right and act like saints.

That’s not the way we’re going to look at saints on All Saints’ Day. You are saints now because God calls you saints. You will be saints then when Christ returns because God’s call does not change.

You might wonder how we can say all of this about saints, because this text never uses the word saint. It does have the word children, though, and in a very special sense: children of God, real children of God.

God Lavishes Love on Us 
So That We Are Real Children of God Now and Forever.

I.

John begins our text, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him” (v 1).

On All Saints’ Day we remember the children of God, the saints of God, who have died this past year. At their funerals, we match Scripture to life, beginning with Ecclesiastes 3:2: There is “a time to be born.” Jane Doe was born October 7, 1952, to John and Mary Doe.

Then, John 3:3: “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” God caused Jane to be born again as his dear child, fathering her in Baptism.

Then Romans 10:9: “Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord.” Jane was instructed in the Evangelical Lutheran faith and confessed that faith in the rite of confirmation at Grace Lutheran Church.

God said in Genesis 2:18, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Jane was the helper that God gave to Sam Smith in holy marriage on June 14, 1975.

Psalm 68:6: “God setteth the solitary in families” (KJV). Four children were born to Jane and Sam.

Ecclesiastes 9:10 says, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.” Jane especially had the Philippians 2:3 ability to “count others more significant.”

Then, back to Ecclesiastes, “there is a time to die.” Jane died on July 25, 2024, at the age of 71 years, 9 months, 18 days. She is survived by her husband and children, grandchildren, relatives, and friends. She was preceded in death by her parents and especially by her Lord Jesus Christ, who died and rose again so that whoever lives and believes in him isn’t really dead!

When all of that is read at a funeral, who in their right mind would say that Jane’s birth as a child of John and Mary was only an empty ceremony? That it didn’t really happen? That’s outrageous.

 People saw her. We saw her. She was a real, live person! But many people would say that the birth from heaven, being fathered by God, never happened, that it was just an empty ceremony. Ridiculous!

We saw the new Jane! We saw her new nature in her confession of faith, her marriage, and her life of faith. Her life was better, she was better, because she was a child of God. The love of God can be seen!

“See what manner of love God lavished on Jane, on you, on me, that we are called children of God—and we really are.” We are just as much a real child of God as we are a real child of John and Mary!

But the world doesn’t recognize that child because it doesn’t recognize the Father. Even Jesus was seen by some as only the child of Joseph and Mary, because they didn’t recognize his Father.

II.

“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, because we shall see him as he is” (v 2).

Jesus will come back, appear again, and we will then appear “like him” in glorious ways we can’t understand now. But we will still be children of God, really. We will continue to exist in a way that we don’t know, but we will be.

 I stopped with the word be deliberately. We don’t know what we will be, but we will still exist, still be children of God. Job said that even after his body was destroyed his eyes would see God. John tells us that we shall see our Redeemer too. There is a resurrection, and we’ll be there.

III.

“And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.” Verse 3 calls all this a hope, and a wonderful hope it is!

Then, though, there’s something that sounds like a catch to all these great promises. There’s always a catch, right? A child of God that has this hope now and then “purifies himself.”

How can we purify ourselves? Am I disqualified because I can’t make myself saintly enough? That’s what the word purify means. It’s directly related to the word for “saint.”

No! It’s not a catch. No one is disqualified whose sins are covered by Christ. Jesus’ death on the cross paid for all sins.

And just as we are justified by grace, by God’s work and not ours, we are also sanctified, purified, by grace, through faith—God’s work, not ours.

God does this through the means of grace: Word and Sacraments. God calls us to faith by the Word, keeps us in faith by the Word, makes us a child in Baptism, and feeds us with the body and blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sins and strengthening in faith.

God made you his child, and, now and then, God keeps his children clean! Really!

Amen.

The Peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior.  Amen.