Sermon for December 28, 2025, First Sunday after Christmas

Matthew 2:13-23 (First Sunday after Christmas—Series A)

“The King, Our Substitute, Who Fulfills God’s Word”

Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, Enfield, CT

December 28, 2025

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Our text is the Gospel Reading recorded in Matthew 2:

¹³And when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph, saying, “Get up and take the child and His mother and flee into Egypt and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to seek the child in order to destroy Him. ¹⁴And he got up and took the child and His mother by night and departed to Egypt, ¹⁵and he was there until Herod’s death, in order that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, “Out of Egypt I called My Son.” ¹⁶Then Herod, when he had seen that he had been deceived by the Magi, became exceedingly angry, and he sent and killed all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its region from two years of age and younger, according to the time that he had ascertained from the Magi. ¹⁷Then was fulfilled what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying, ¹⁸ “A sound in Ramah was heard, weeping and much lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children, and she was not willing to be comforted, because they are no more.” ¹⁹But after Herod had died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt ²⁰saying, “Get up and take the child and His mother and journey to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life have died.” ²¹And he got up and took the child and His mother and entered the land of Israel. ²²But when he had heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the place of his father, Herod, he was afraid to go back there, and because he had been warned in a dream, he departed into the parts of Galilee, ²³and he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, in order that what was spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled for He will be called a Nazarene.

          Merry Christmas! But with this text, it sure seems more like “Merry Grinch-mas!” In King Herod, we have a real “Grinch”. On second thought, “Grinch” is too nice of a word to describe King Herod. He is truly “the monster of the Christmas story.” 

          Herod took the snub of the wise men with all the rage of the deluded and suspicious old paranoid that he had become. “Ordering the ruthless massacre of all male babies two years old and under in Bethlehem and vicinity, he hoped that the infant ‘king’ must certainly have been among the victims. Estimating a town of some 2000 inhabitants at the time, about 20 male babies would have fallen into this category and been slain. The scene of mothers madly trying to hush their crying infants so as not to be discovered, only to see them snatched out of their arms by Herod’s soldiers, thrown to the floor, and run through with swords sends a bristle of shock into the Christmas story so utterly [dissonant] with the rest of it.”^[1]

          Herod, the monster of Christmas, seems to ruin this First Sunday after Christmas. Here we are back in God’s house, and the joy is stolen from us by this maniac king. As the prophet Jeremiah had spoken, “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; and she was not willing to be comforted, because they are no more.” In the very region where Old Testament Rachel had died giving birth to Benjamin, other children of the promise lost their lives to wicked King Herod’s sword, and their mothers wept and could not be consoled.

          The wise men or Magi had traveled to Jerusalem looking for “he who has been born king of the Jews?” (Matt. 2:2 ESV). Matthew, in spite of the “Grinch”, King Herod, is proclaiming that Jesus is the true King of God’s people. And evil kings will have no power over this Child because He is the One who fulfills Scripture.

          Matthew in his Gospel has many Old Testament references specifically showing how Jesus fulfills the Scriptures. We heard on the Fourth Sunday of Advent that Mary would bear a son and that Joseph would call His name Jesus because He would save His people from their sins. Matthew tells us that this happened to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by Isaiah, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (Matt. 1:23 ESV). In today’s Gospel, we have three references showing that Jesus fulfilled the Scriptures. Hosea 11:1, “Out of Egypt I called My Son.” Jeremiah 31:15, “A sound in Ramah was heard, weeping and much lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children, and she was not willing to be comforted, because they are no more.” And “He will be called a Nazarene,” which runs against all normal expectations, for although the Christ is born in Bethlehem, the prophetic plan for Him is that “He will be called a Nazarene,” taking up residence in Nazareth. And He would be despised as such, receiving contempt as a man from Nazareth. As Nathaniel asked Philip, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” And Philip said, “Come and see” (John 1:46).

          St. Matthew invites us to see Him who came from Nazareth, the One misunderstood and despised. This Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords. Seriously? This child, this toddler who has never set foot in a palace a day in His life? This child who is taken with His mother by his earthly father to Egypt just to stay alive? This child who came back to the land of Israel and lived in Nazareth of all places?

          Truly, Jesus is the King and Savior of His people. He is the Christ promised in the pages of the Old Testament. He is the One who saves His people from their sins in fulfillment of God’s Word. So, as the hymnwriter says, “Then greet the King of GloryForetold in sacred story: Hosanna to the Lord, For He fulfills God’s Word!”[2] Jesus fulfilled God’s Word by standing in the place of Israel. The true King embodied His people He had come to save.

          The prophet Hosea, whom Matthew quotes, had written, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols” (Hos. 11:1-2 ESV). Israel, the children of God’s Promise, was considered by God to be His “son.” The nation that God promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was God’s chosen people according to His grace. The Lord treated Isreal as His “son.” It was God’s “son,” Israel, whom He brought out of Egypt “with a mighty hand and redeemed [them] from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt” (Deut. 7:8 ESV). But Israel was a rebellious child. Israel failed to be the “son” God had chosen the nation to be, and so the people stood under God’s judgment because of their idolatry and sins against Him.

          In order to save Israel, God the Father gave His only Son to be conceived and born in human flesh to take Israel’s place as its substitute. The Son of David, the Son of Abraham, the Christ, would redeem, buy Israel back, from sin and death by living as God’s perfect Son and by suffering the punishment on behalf of the people of Israel. And so it was that Jesus, the One-of-a-Kind Son of God, at around the age of two, went down to Egypt with Mary and Joseph at the command of God’s angel. Once maniac Herod had died, the holy family would return to the land of Israel, “Out of Egypt I called My Son.” As Moses and the Israelites (God’s “son”) had come out of Egypt at the time of the Exodus, so Jesus was standing in their place, coming also “out of Egypt” as the perfect substitute for Israel.

          Jesus underwent His own exodus from Egypt as God’s Son. This perfect Son offered perfect obedience to God the Father to save His people from their sins. Jesus went where His people went, to Egypt and back. Jesus stood where His people had stood, in the waters of the Jordan River as they crossed into the Promised Land. Jesus fought and won spiritual battles in the wilderness during His temptation where Israel had fought and lost in the wilderness for forty years. Ultimately, Jesus died the death the people deserved, in their place, as the ransom payment in the place of the many (Matthew 20:28).

          And “the many” is not limited to Israel. As we heard on Christmas Day from John 1, “But to all who did receive [Jesus], who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13 ESV). Jesus said in John 6, “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:40 ESV). St. Peter preached to Cornelius and his household, “To [Jesus] all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (Acts 10:43 ESV).

          As true God and true Man, Jesus took all of humanity’s place under God’s Commandments. Galatians 4, our Epistle Reading today, “But when the fullness of time had come, 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” (Gal. 4:4-5 ESV). Because you and I are unable to keep God’s Commandment perfectly, Jesus took on human flesh and became man so that He might stand in your place and mine and do what you and I never could. Jesus obeyed God the Father perfectly for us and credits us with having done so. We receive Jesus perfect record as our own.

          And in exchange, Jesus has taken our sins, our rebellion against God, and our guilt as if they were HIS own. He suffered and died for our guilt because we had failed to keep God’s Commandments. The punishment that Israel deserved, and that we deserve, was imposed on Jesus, God’s Son. On the cross, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” suffered hell and death in our place, as our substitute. Hebrews 2:14, “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, [Jesus] himself likewise partook of the same things, [flesh and blood] that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14 ESV). His blood was poured out so that we are redeemed from sin. The forgiveness of sins is yours because of Jesus’ perfect life and sacrificial death. On the third day, this same Jesus rose again from the dead, overcoming death and the devil for you and me.

          Jesus Christ is the King, the Son of God, our Savior. He took all people’s place under God’s judgment against sin—Israel’s, yours, and mine—the whole world’s! By paying the penalty of our guilt, Jesus atoned, or made satisfaction, for our sins. We are forgiven. We have eternal life because of God’s Son, Jesus the Nazarene, our perfect substitute in His life, death, and resurrection. Amen.

     [1] Paul L. Maier, In the Fullness of Time (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1991), 64.

     [2] Text: © 1978 Lutheran Book of Worship. Used by permission: LSB Hymn License no. 110000752