A father paid $900,000 to ransom his 13 year old boy who had been kidnapped.
Was he worth it? (Once a family paid $21 million for the release of a family member)
Does God know values? Does the One who made you know your worth? If He says you are worth what He paid for you, would you dispute it? After all, if you are not worth that much, then He cheated Himself, didn’t He? Thank God, you are worth the ransom.”
What makes a man valuable to God?
Why did God pay such an infinite ransom for man? To understand we must recognise God’s purpose in creating him. God made man for fellowship with Himself. Concerning Israel of old, God said, “this people have I formed for myself ” (Isaiah 43:21). Yes, “the Lord taketh pleasure in his people” (Psalm 149:4).
Each one is different, a new individual. You are unique. God “needed” only one like you. But He “needed” that one. “We were brought into existence because we were needed” (ST, April 22, 1903).
One of the greatest needs in the human heart is to feel needed. To fill the need of one we love, to know that that one fills our need—this constitutes the basis of true fellowship. The husband and wife who have such an experience together enjoy a foretaste of heaven. When parents and children share this communion, there is no generation gap. The satisfactions of true friendship are possible because of mutual need and mutual fulfillment of need. And through all these human relationships God seeks to reveal Himself to us. He longs to have us understand not only what He means to us but what we mean to Him.
Many biblical heroes gladdened their Creator by enjoying an intimate fellowship with Him. Enoch walked with God three hundred years. He meant so much to the Lord that He said, “Come home with Me, Enoch, and we will keep on walking together all through eternity.” “Before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God” (Hebrews 11:5). Enoch made God happy. He met the heart need of the Infinite One, and there are Enochs today (COL 332).
Think of Abraham. While the Scriptures record his mistakes and failures, it also states that “he was called the Friend of God” (James 2:23). Who called him that? The Lord Himself. He speaks of him as “Abraham my friend” (Isaiah 41:8). Notice in the story of Genesis 18 the fellowship God enjoyed with His friend. Hear His expression of confidence: “I know him” (Genesis 18:19). Hear Him counselling with Abraham over the fate of Sodom. Listen as Abraham talks with God reverently, yet confidently, suggesting what he thinks would accord with divine justice and mercy. Then consider Moses. “The Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend” (Exodus 33:11). This intimacy, developed during Moses’ years of solitude as a shepherd in Midian, continued unbroken (save for that moment of impatience at Kadesh) throughout his forty years as visible leader of Israel. Behold Moses in the mount, shut in with God in closest communion. Here the Lord reveals to him the plans for a sanctuary on earth, a miniature model of the heavenly temple.
But the consideration of these plans is interrupted as God tells Moses what is going on down in the camp. Apostasy demands stern measures, and God proposes to wipe out Israel and begin a new nation with Moses. Like Abraham, Moses dares humbly but boldly to intercede with God. He urges reasons why God should spare Israel. He offers to lay down his own life for his people. His pleas echo the deepest yearnings of the Most High; so God and Moses come to a united understanding, an agreement concerning Israel’s future.
And where do you fit into the picture? God has formed you, too, to be His friend. You cannot take the place of Enoch, of Abraham, or of Moses, nor can they take your place. God has a place in His infinite heart that only you can fill. He “needs” you for His friend. He longs for your fellowship, your love, your understanding. To Him you are precious. For this reason He made you. For this reason He died for you. For this reason He went back to heaven to prepare a place for you, leaving His parting promise, “I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (John 14:3).
All my life I have known that I needed God. But it came as a wonderful revelation when I found out that He “needed” me, not just to run errands for Him, but to be His friend. I want to share the same good news with you. For, no matter how much He loves me, remember that He values you as if you were the only one in the world. “The relations between God and each soul are as distinct and full as though there were not another soul upon the earth” (SC 100).
How can God really need one individual when He has millions of other friends? He has a place in His heart which nobody but you can fill. And the love of millions of others which gladdens His heart cannot take the place of your love, your friendship, your fellowship.
Only one thing hinders. Sin separated man from God in Eden, and sin prolongs that separation today. “Your iniquities have separated between you and your God” (Isaiah 59:2).
Since sin makes the separation between God and those He loves, He hates it, cannot tolerate it, cannot live with it. He must eradicate it, but how can He do so without destroying those infected with sin?
In the sanctuary God reveals His wonderful plan to solve the sin problem—how to destroy sin without destroying those He loves, how to save sinners without perpetuating sin. It is an expensive plan. It has already cost Heaven long ages of sorrow and pain. But you are so valuable that Christ would have paid the entire ransom just to save you alone.
Ransom is one thing, reunion is another, and Christ our Creator, Redeemer, and Intercessor has fully provided both. R&R WDF
