I also seem to hear that voice from the One who gathers the broken and welcomes the oppressed: “Lengthen your ropes still further. Spread out to the right and to the left. Drive in your stakes; do not spare your tent curtains. I gave you up, and I will help you. In a brief burst of anger I struck you, but with everlasting mercy I will glorify you.”
The measure of His kindness exceeds the measure of His discipline. The former things were because of wickedness; the present things because the Trinity is worshiped. The former were for cleansing; the present, as He says, “for My glory. I glorify those who glorify Me, and I provoke those who provoke Me to jealousy. See, these things are sealed up with Me.” This is the unbreakable law of measure for measure.
But you surrounded yourself with walls, stone slabs, ornate mosaics, long colonnades and galleries. You shone and glittered with gold, pouring some out like water and storing up the rest like sand. You did not know that faith under the open sky is better than godlessness surrounded by luxury. Nor did you know that three people gathered in the Lord’s name are worth more to God than tens of thousands who deny His divinity.
Would you prefer all the Canaanites to Abraham alone? The people of Sodom to Lot? The Midianites to Moses, though each of these men was a foreigner and stranger? What about Gideon’s three hundred, who distinguished themselves bravely, compared with the thousands who turned back? And what about Abraham’s household servants? They were only a little more numerous than Gideon’s three hundred, yet, though few, they pursued and routed many kings and armies numbering in the tens of thousands. And how do you understand the saying, “Even if the number of the children of Israel becomes like the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved”? Or again, “I have left for Myself seven thousand men who did not bow the knee to Baal”? No, that is not how it is—not at all. God does not take pleasure in sheer numbers.