3.  The Father’s giving of them to him to save them, declares that he is and will be gentle and patient towards them under all their provocations and miscarriages.  It is not to be imagined, the trials and provocations that the Son of God hath all along had with these people that have been given to him to save.  Indeed, he is said to be A tried stone; for he has been tried not only by the devil, guilt of sin, death, and the curse of the law, but also by his people’s ignorance, unruliness, falls into sin, and declining to errors in life and doctrine.  Were we but capable of seeing how this Lord Jesus has been tried, even by his people, ever since there was one of them in the world, we should be amazed at his patience and gentle carriages to them.  It is said indeed, “The Lord is very pitiful, slow to anger, and of great mercy.”  And indeed, if he had not been so, he could never have endured their manners as he has done, from Adam hitherto.  Therefore are his pity and bowels towards his church preferred above the pity and bowels of a mother towards her child.  “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?  Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee, saith the Lord.”

God did once give Moses, as Christ’s servant, a handful of his people to carry them in his bosom, but no further than from Egypt to Canaan; and this Moses, as is said of him by the Holy Ghost, was the meekest man that was then to be found upon the earth.  God gave them to Moses that he might carry them in his bosom, that he might show gentleness and patience towards them, under all the provocations wherewith they would provoke him from that time till he had brought them to their land.  But he failed in the work; he could not exercise it, because he had not that sufficiency of patience towards them.  But now it is said of the person speaking in the text, that “he shall gather his lambs with his arm, shall carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead them that are with young.”

4.  The Father’s giving them to him to save them, declares that he hath a sufficiency of wisdom to wage with all those difficulties that would attend him in his bringing his sons and daughters unto glory.  He hath made him to us to be wisdom; yea, he is called Wisdom itself.  And God saith, moreover, that he “shall deal prudently.”  And indeed, he that shall take upon him to be the Saviour of the people, had need be wise, because their adversaries are subtle above any.  Here they are to encounter the serpent, who for his subtlety outwitted our father and mother when their wisdom was at highest.  But if we talk of wisdom, our Jesus is wise, wiser than Solomon, wiser than all men, wiser than all angels; he is even “the wisdom of God.”  And hence it is that he turneth sins, temptations, persecutions, falls, and all things, for good unto his people.