The sermon continues an expository series through the Gospel of Matthew, turning to Matthew 2:13-23. Having established in Matthew 1 the genealogical origin of Jesus as the promised Son of David born of a virgin, the sermon now argues that Matthew 2 addresses the Messiah's geographical origin, since Old Testament prophecy required the Messiah to come from Bethlehem even though Jesus was popularly known as "Jesus of Nazareth." The preacher frames Matthew as a confident advocate who does not merely defend Jesus's messianic credentials but goes on the offensive, showing that every geographical detail of Jesus's early life — his flight to Egypt, the massacre in Bethlehem, and his upbringing in Nazareth — was woven by God into the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.

The sermon works through three sections. The first (verses 13-15) recounts the angel warning Joseph in a dream to flee with the child and Mary to Egypt to escape Herod, fulfilling Hosea 11:1, "Out of Egypt I called my son." The sermon notes a theological difficulty: in Hosea, "my son" originally refers to Israel and recalls the historical Exodus, not a future individual. The preacher resolves this through the lens of typology, illustrated by an analogy of a father leaving a voice-recording teddy bear with his son — a "same but different, and better" relationship between shadow and reality. The Exodus, the sermon explains, represented three things: God saving his people from slavery, God making a covenant with them, and God forming them into a nation for himself — yet the old Exodus ultimately failed because Israel remained enslaved to sin, broke the covenant through disobedience, and was eventually destroyed as a nation. Drawing on Isaiah 43:16-21 and Hosea 2:14-15, the sermon argues that God promised a greater, future Exodus that would succeed where the first failed. Matthew's citation of Hosea 11:1 announces that this new Exodus arrives in Jesus, who will save his people not merely from Egypt but from the deeper slavery of sin.

The second section (verses 16-18) covers Herod's slaughter of the male infants of Bethlehem, which Matthew presents as fulfilling Jeremiah 31:15, "Rachel weeping for her children." The sermon first addresses a historical objection — that the massacre appears nowhere outside Matthew — by cataloguing Herod's well-documented brutality, including the murder of his own wife, her family, and three of his sons, and by noting that Bethlehem's small population (roughly 1,000 people) means the number of infants killed was likely no more than twenty, small enough to escape wider historical record amid Herod's many other atrocities. The sermon then turns to the theological problem: Jeremiah 31:15 originally laments Judah's exile to Babylon, seemingly unrelated to Jesus. The resolution lies in reading the verse in light of its immediate context, Jeremiah 31:31-34, the promise of a new covenant in which God will write his law on his people's hearts and forgive their sin permanently. Because that new-covenant promise follows the weeping in Jeremiah's structure, the sermon argues that the mourning of Rachel is fulfilled only when the mourning finally ends — and that end comes through Jesus, whose new covenant brings the last weeping to a close by putting a final end to suffering and misery.

The third section (verses 19-23) narrates the family's return from Egypt after Herod's death, their avoidance of Judea under the equally cruel Archelaus, and their settling in Nazareth, fulfilling the statement that "he shall be called a Nazarene." The sermon highlights the peculiar difficulty that no Old Testament verse actually contains this wording, and that Matthew deliberately uses the plural "prophets" rather than citing one text, showing he intends to summarize a theme rather than quote a specific prophecy. That theme, the sermon argues, is the reputation of Nazareth as a despised, backward town — referenced elsewhere in the Gospels ("can anything good come from Nazareth?") and used later as a term of mockery against Peter. The sermon connects this motif of lowly, ridiculed origin to prophetic pictures of a rejected, suffering figure in Zechariah 12:10, Psalm 22, and especially Isaiah 53, concluding that all the prophets together anticipated a Messiah who would be despised and looked down upon by his own people.

The sermon closes by summarizing the three movements as together telling, in advance, the whole gospel story: Jesus comes to save from sin, to save from suffering, and yet will be rejected, mocked, and killed by the very people he came to save. The preacher presents this as evidence of a uniquely self-giving God, who does not ask for human contribution but gives salvation freely, and closes in prayer thanking God for sending his Son not to condemn but to die so that all who believe would have eternal life.

Bible Verses Used

• Matthew 2:13-23: The sermon's main text, recounting the flight to Egypt, the massacre of the infants, and the settlement in Nazareth as three fulfillments of prophecy.

• Hosea 11:1: Cited by Matthew as fulfilled in the flight to Egypt; read typologically as Jesus fulfilling and succeeding where the Exodus and Israel failed.

• Isaiah 43:16-21: Used to show God's promise of a future, greater Exodus that surpasses the first.

• Hosea 2:14-15: Cited alongside Isaiah 43 as further evidence of a promised new act of salvation/Exodus.

• Jeremiah 31:15: Matthew's citation for the Bethlehem massacre, read as Rachel's weeping for the exile.

• Jeremiah 31:31-34: The new covenant promise following the weeping in Jeremiah, argued to be the fulfillment point that ends the mourning through Jesus.

• Zechariah 12:10: Referenced as prophetic anticipation of the Messiah being pierced and rejected.

• Psalm 22: Cited as depicting the humiliation and mockery of God's righteous servant, applied to Jesus.

• Isaiah 53: Highlighted as the clearest Old Testament picture of the despised, suffering Messiah, tying together the theme of Jesus's lowly, rejected origin.