Out of Egypt I Called My Son
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Text: Matthew 2:13–23
PRAYER TIME
1. Where We’ve Been in Matthew
We have been moving carefully through the opening chapters of Gospel according to Matthew
Matthew has been doing something very intentional.
So far, we have seen:
Jesus’ royal genealogy (Matt 1:1–17): He is the true Son of David, heir to the throne.
The virgin conception (1:18–25): He is not merely a human king, but Immanuel—God with us.
The visit of the Magi (2:1–12): Gentiles recognize what Israel’s king refuses to see—the King has arrived.
Herod’s fear: The first response to Jesus’ kingship is not worship, but hostility.
Matthew has been answering one dominant question:
Who is this child, and why does His coming provoke such extreme reactions?
That question has been building. And now, in our passage this morning, it intensifies.
Today we will be looking at Matthew 2:13-23
Please stand for the reading of God’s word.
This is God’s word
(Thanks be to God)
2. When the Promised King Must Run
There is something unsettling about this scene.
We expect a king to arrive with power, stability, and visible triumph.
Instead, Matthew shows us:
A warning in the night
A father waking his family in fear
A desperate flight across a border
A tyrant murdering children
And the Messiah… running for His life
This raises a tension we are meant to feel:
How can the promised King of Israel begin His reign as a refugee?
Matthew does not resolve that question immediately. He wants us to walk through the darkness before we see the glory.
3. Watching the Story Unfold
I. A King Preserved by Obedient Faith (vv. 13–15)
God speaks again—quietly, personally, providentially
vs 13a
Another dream
An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream
Another command
vs 13b
Another immediate obedience by Joseph
vs 14
Joseph does not argue.
He does not delay.
He gets up and obeys.
This couldn’t have been easy
Knowing that the king of your people wants your son dead
fleeing to another country to protect your family
Not knowing how long it will take...
Faith often looks less like heroism and more like quiet, costly obedience.
Egypt: A shocking destination
Why Egypt?
Is it random??
For Israel, Egypt is:
A place of slavery
400+ years
A place of exile
A place God once delivered them from
And yet—God sends His Son into Egypt.
Egypt is not random.
Then Matthew drops a line that changes everything:
Vs 15 - “This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.’” (v. 15)
This quotation comes from Hosea 11:1.
II. Jesus as the True Israel of God (v. 15)
This is where Matthew slows us down—and where we must think big picture
A. Hosea 11:1 in its original context
When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
Hosea is not predicting the Messiah in the narrow sense. He is looking backward:
“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.”
Hosea is speaking of the Exodus—God redeeming Israel, His “son,” from slavery.
So why does Matthew apply this to Jesus?
B. Matthew’s theological claim
Matthew is saying:
Jesus recapitulates the entire story of Israel—
He isn’t simply the fulfillment of Israel’s promises...
but where Israel failed, Jesus succeeds.
Israel is called God’s “son” (Exod 4:22)
Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son,
Jesus is called God’s beloved Son
and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
Israel goes into Egypt and comes out rebellious
Jesus goes into Egypt and comes out obedient
Israel fails in the wilderness
Jesus triumphs in the wilderness
💡 Jesus is not merely part of Israel’s story—He is Israel as one faithful Son.
As John Calvin observed:
“Christ in Himself gathered up the whole body of the Church, that He might be the true seed of Abraham.”
This matters profoundly:
Our covenant standing before God does not rest on our obedience...
EXPAND...
...covenant of Redemption with God and Christ
Jesus fulfills the covenant where Israel—and we—have failed
III. A King Opposed by the World (vv. 16–18)
Read vv16-18
Herod’s response is chilling:
...Deception turns into fury...
Fear turns into violence
Power turns into murder
The slaughter of the innocents echoes Pharaoh...
Once again:
A tyrant fears a deliverer
Children die as a result
BUT, what we cannot miss...
God’s redemptive plan moves forward anyway
Matthew quotes Jeremiah 31:15—Rachel weeping for her children.
In Jeremiah 31 Rachel is poetically portrayed as weeping from her tomb near Ramah.
She was the Matriarch of Benjamin and Joseph
Tribes deeply connected to the norther kingdom and later devastation
Ramah was a staging point where exiles were gathered before being deported to Babylon
Rachel’s tears symbolize Israel’s covenant curse from Duet 28
Loss of children, land, and their freedom because of their sin
BUT Jeremiah 31 does not end with weeping
Right after verse 15 comes a promise.
Thus says the Lord:
“Keep your voice from weeping,
and your eyes from tears,
for there is a reward for your work,
declares the Lord,
and they shall come back from the land of the enemy.
There is hope for your future,
declares the Lord,
and your children shall come back to their own country.
Then this chapter climaxes in the New Covenant promise
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
Rachel weeps and mourns, but redemption is coming!
Here, Matthew applies this text from Jeremiah, to Herod’s massacre of the infants in Bethlehem
Matthew is not claiming that Jeremiah predicted what Herod would do.
Rather he is saying
That same covenantal sorrow that Israel experienced in exile has reached its darkest time
and is now about to be reversed.
Bethlehem sits in the territory historically associated with Rachel
Once again:
Mothers are losing their children
A tyrant is ruling over the people
God’s people are suffering under foreign oppression
The pattern returns here in Matthew,
BUT this time a deliverer is already present.
This is where Matthew’s account is profoundly Christ-centered
Jesus
Driven into Egypt - replaying Israel’s history
Returns as the true Son
Stands as the embodiment of faithful Israel
Rachel’s tears can have consolation
The one who would:
Bear the curse
Establish the New Covenant
End the exile of sin and death
Is now alive in Bethlehem.
I believe that we can draw a few points of rich theology from this:
1. God does not minimize real suffering
Weeping, sorrow, mourning, suffering,
He doesn’t say that the suffering isn’t real, or is no big deal
He sees the suffering of his people.
2. God does not abandon his covenant people in their grief
God is always present, always loving, and always good
3. God typically brings redemption THROUGH not around deep sorrow
Rachel weeps, but her children are about to be restored FOREVER!
I think we can also see here from Herod’s reaction
The coming of Christ exposes the darkness of the world.
As R.C. Sproul said:
“The presence of Christ does not create evil; it reveals it.”
Little apologetics lesson for you.
Debate with Cliffe about God creating evil...
Student says that if there is a child with cancer
God either caused it, or he didn’t.
if he didn’t cause it, 2 options,
either wanted it to happen or he didn’t
if he didn’t, that implies that he did nothing to prevent it....
asks how you reconcile that with a good benevolent God
His answer was spot on
A . Evil proves that God exists
1. If there is no God, Objective morals do not exist
2. Evil exists, of course it does we all know it
3. Because Evil exists, objective morals have to exist
4. because objective morals exist, God exists
If you you really get frustrated with Evil, you can’t say, there is no God because of Evil
Then you have a real problem....what you exp as evil isn’t
Relative, arbitrary
B. Gen 3 records the fall
We are born into an unfair, messed up world
We basically told God to get lost,
God partially honored our request and allows us to live how we see fit, and chaos erupts.
C. Wraps it up by saying let’s go into the hospital room with the little boy dying of cancer.
Come on my atheist friend, stand on one side, I will stand on the other.
What is your solution??
No solution
Tough luck kid, fate, destiny, chance
I look at this child and say.…
IV. A King Who Dwells With the Lowly (vv. 19–23)
Read 19-23
Herod dies.
Kings always do.
But God’s purposes continue.
Joseph obeys again, but now must settle in Nazareth—a despised place.
It is said, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
And yet Matthew says:
“So that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene.”
Many scholars have debated what this means
This is not a single quotation—I believe that it is a theme:
The Messiah will be despised
Rejected
Overlooked
The King of Glory grows up in obscurity.
Only now, after walking through fear, exile, sorrow, and obscurity, does the central truth emerge:
Jesus is the true Son of God—the faithful Israel—who enters our exile, bears our suffering, and secures our redemption.
5. Applications
For Believers
Your salvation rests on Christ’s obedience, not yours
God’s purposes are often advanced through hidden faithfulness
Obedience may lead into hardship—but never outside God’s covenant care
If Jesus is the promised see, true Israel, then you are secure in Him
Let’s pray.
