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"...The church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth."
I Timothy 3:15
The Preservation of the Infant Jesus
H. T. Kilpatrick
From The Baptist Pulpit, 1850
It is night, and all nature sleeps. But what or who is that I see passing with hasty step, thus hid from public gaze, and the searching eye of persecution? It is a delicate female, and with a tender infant pressed to her maternal bosom, and accompanied by one lone person else, but who is she? Oh! It is Mary, the mother of Jesus! She carries in her arms the only hope of a ruined world!
Here is a strong case. Herod is out, or about to be, on the work of infant murder, and this very infant is the sole object of pursuit. In the history of man's redemption a wondrous page is here turned up to view. It would appear that this matter has now to be settled, as it were, between the Great Jehovah, and Herod, whether God's eternal purposes of salvation shall all fail, and the whole scheme of mercy be thwarted by Herod!
No! Brethren, we tell you, no! And though things appear, humanly speaking, to be thus hair-hung, as it were, yet Herod can no more murder that infant, than he can pluck the strong pillars from the throne of Jehovah. This same infant Jesus is the incarnate God—is God as well as man—is called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. (Isa. 9:6)
Now we hold it as a truth, that Herod could no more destroy God the Son, than he could destroy God the Father, contrary to the counsels of the Godhead; and that God the Son would as surely finish the great work of the atonement upon the cross, burst the bands of death and return to the Father—we say we hold these things just as certain, as that the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.
And we all agree that if God had seen proper, he could have destroyed ten thousand such as Herod in a moment of time. But notwithstanding all this, it was absolutely necessary that the infant Jesus should be carried to Egypt, beyond Herod's jurisdiction?
Why?
Because God commanded it to be. Because it was His will who worketh all things after the counsel of his own pleasure. Because this was one link in the great chain of God's economy of grace, and if one link be gone, the chain is broken. Because the Scriptures must be fulfilled, "Out of Egypt have I called my Son." (Matt. 2:15)
And we might add, because God intended to teach that his purposes and sovereignty do not supersede the necessity of man's agency.