Christmas 1 2025

Texts: 2 Samuel 7:1–16; Galatians 4:1–7; Luke 2:22–40

David had good intentions.

After years of uncertainty and conflict, he finally had rest from his enemies. His life had settled. And as he looked around at that settled life, one thing stood out to him. He lived in a house of cedar, while the ark of God remained in a tent. It felt out of balance. Improper. Unfinished.

It seemed obvious what the next step should be. God had given David peace. Now it was David’s turn.

That assumption matters—not because it was selfish or irreverent, but because it was natural. Faithfulness, gratitude, and stability all seem to move in one direction: upward. We receive from God, and then we respond by giving something back. We assume that is how a faithful relationship works.

And that raises the question that will carry us through the rest of this sermon:

What kind of relationship does God actually want with His people?

David assumes it is the kind of relationship where settled people build something worthy for God. But the LORD interrupts him. “Would you build Me a house?” God asks. And then He turns everything around. “The LORD will make you a house” (2 Samuel 7:11).

Not a building, but a lineage.

Not a monument, but a son.

A son whose kingdom the LORD Himself will establish, and whose throne will endure forever (2 Samuel 7:13).

The promise is deeply personal. “I will be his father, and he shall be My son” (2 Samuel 7:14).

God’s answer to David’s question is clear. The relationship He wants is not built on what His people give Him, but on what He gives to them.

When God keeps that promise, He does not ask for something in return. He gives. He sends His Son. And Luke shows us what that kind of relationship looks like.

Luke does not take us back to shepherds or angels. He brings us to the temple. And what he emphasizes is not wonder, but obedience. Over and over again, Luke tells us that everything is done “according to the Law of the Lord” (Luke 2:22, 23, 24, 27, 39).

The Son promised to David does not arrive as a king receiving homage. He arrives as an infant being carried. He does not command the Law. He submits to it. He is presented, redeemed, purified for, offered for—exactly as the Law requires.

This is deliberate. The heir of David’s throne lives as a child under guardians.

And here again, the same question is being answered. What kind of relationship does God want with His people?

Not one where they climb up toward Him.

One where He comes all the way down.

Simeon understands what is happening. He recognizes the child not merely as Israel’s consolation, but as God’s salvation, prepared “in the presence of all peoples” (Luke 2:31). He confesses that this child will divide, that He will be opposed, that suffering already shadows His life (Luke 2:34–35). The cross is already visible in the temple courts.

And then Simeon sings.

That song is not a farewell to life. It is a confession of fulfillment.

We often imagine Simeon as an old man who has been holding on for this one moment, who can now finally go home and die. There may be good reason for that picture. A younger man would not have spoken as he did without drawing attention. But Luke does not actually tell us that Simeon dies that day. That is our assumption.

What Luke does tell us is more important. Simeon is at peace—not because his life is ending, but because God has kept His promise. He has seen the Son. Not enthroned. Not triumphant in appearance. But given. Present. Received.

That is enough.

Simeon is at peace because he now knows the answer to the question David asked long ago. God does not want a relationship built on what we give Him, but on what He gives to us.

Luke then closes the scene without spectacle. Jesus returns to Nazareth. He grows. He learns. He lives quietly under His parents, under the Law, under time (Luke 2:39–40).

The promised Son of David grows up like any other son.

Saint Paul takes everything Luke has shown us and says it plainly.

“When the fullness of time had come,” Paul writes, “God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the Law, to redeem those who were under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4–5).

Here the question is finally answered without ambiguity.

God did not send His Son to improve our standing with Him. He sent His Son to change it entirely. Not so that we would become better servants, but so that we would become sons.

That is what Christmas accomplishes.

And that changes more than how we think about God. It changes how we understand ourselves, our lives, and the way we move through the world. If God’s relationship with us is no longer built on exchange—on what we give and what we get back—then it will quietly unsettle many of the expectations we live with every day.

When we speak about fairness before God, we rarely mean it in abstract terms. Few of us spend our days worrying consciously about what we deserve from Him. But we do carry quieter expectations. We think in terms like this: I tried to do the right thing. I stayed faithful. I gave more than was required. And when life responds not with blessing, but with loss—when relationships fracture, when love is not returned, when Christmas feels emptier rather than fuller—the pain sounds like this: This should not be happening.

It is not only that something has gone wrong. It is that life no longer looks the way we thought faithfulness would make it look.

In a way, this is still the same assumption David made. Not that we need to build God a building, but that a faithful relationship with Him should result in a life that holds together in a certain way. We try to build a kind of house out of faithfulness itself—a structure where love is secure, where sacrifice guarantees attachment, where doing the right thing keeps certain losses at bay. And when that house collapses, the pain is not only that we have lost something precious. It is that the relationship no longer looks the way we thought it was supposed to.

Christmas answers that assumption the same way God answered David. He does not ask us to build something stable for Him. He promises to place us inside what He gives.

The eternal Son did not come simply to show compassion, or to offer an example, or to inspire devotion. He came to change your status. He placed Himself where you were: under obligation, under command, under judgment. And He did not do this for faithful servants or deserving heirs. He lived as a servant so that unworthy and rebellious servants might become sons.

But it was not only His living that accomplished this. It was His suffering and His death.

He humbled Himself, taking the form of a servant, and He became obedient—not merely in life, but obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. He bore what servants deserve. He carried the weight of rebellion. He was treated as the guilty one, the transgressor, the one stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.

That is the full measure of His servanthood. He lived—and died!—as a faithful servant so that unworthy and rebellious servants might become sons.

And that is why your sonship is certain.

Sonship here is not a metaphor. It is not a feeling. It is not seasonal warmth. It is a declaration sealed in blood.

“You are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (Galatians 4:7).

That means you are no longer asking faithfulness to do what only Christ can do. You are no longer asking love to hold everything together. You are no longer asking obedience to guarantee outcomes.

God has already given you a house.

And He has placed you inside it.

That is why the Church keeps singing Simeon’s song.

After Holy Communion, after the body and blood of Christ have been placed into our hands and upon our lips, the Church teaches us to say with Simeon, “Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace.” Not because our lives are finished, but because God’s promise has been fulfilled. We have received Christ. And having received Him, we lack nothing.

There are also moments when that song is sung more quietly.

When a Christian dies at home, and the family is waiting—waiting for the nurse, waiting for the funeral home—there is often a stillness that settles in the room. In those moments, the Church has learned to sing Simeon’s song. Not to explain death. Not to hurry grief. But to confess what is already true: the servant has seen the Lord’s salvation. The promise has been kept. Peace is not imagined. It is confessed.

Some of you have stood in rooms like that. Some of you have sung that song there.

And the comfort is not that death feels easy. It is that Christ has been given—and that is enough.

Luke ends his story where we might least expect it: Nazareth. Growth. Obedience. Ordinary life.

And that, too, belongs to the relationship God wants with His people.

Sons grow.

Sons learn.

Sons live under authority without losing dignity.

Christmas does not lift you out of ordinary life. It places you into it as an heir. You live not trying to earn a place, but because you already have one.

David wanted to build a house for God. God promised instead to build a house through His Son. That Son entered the Law, the family, the routines of ordinary life, and even death itself, so that you would be brought into God’s household forever.

God has not given you what is fair.

He has given you His Son.

Because of His faithful Son, you are not a slave.

You are a son. And in Christ, you are home.