Not long ago my family and I were on vacation at Disney World in Florida. Everything at Disney World is of course of a very inflated price and occasionally of an inflated value. One morning we were waiting for a transport shuttle to take us from our Disney resort where we were staying to one of the theme parks. While we were waiting for what was an unusually long time for the shuttle, my three year old son Sebastian made his way to a soda machine and was fiddling around poking a the buttons and examining all of the pictures of the different types of sodas. After a little while of playing at the soda machine he walked over to where I was seated and said, “Um Daddy…” (My wife and I know we are in trouble whenever Sebastian starts a sentence that way) “Um Daddy… I need a hundred dollars!” This was very much to the amusement of the man seated next to me who I had been talking to while as we waited for the park shuttle. Upon questioning my three year as to his need for one hundred dollars, he explained to me that he needed to purchase a soda from the soda machine! I explained to him that we had drinks with us and that if a soda from that machine were in fact priced at one hundred dollars it would not be getting any money from us! A person would have to be a person of great wealth indeed to routinely consume sodas that cost $100.00 each! And a soda of that price would have to be a truly incredible drink to warrant such a pricey cost. But wealth and worth and cost are different things. Yet most people think, that if a man is worth five hundred thousand dollars, he must be a man of worth, though he might have all that, and yet be worth less from great debt; or he may even be a man who though possessing great wealth and having no character, remain worthless. Wealth and worth are different things. When Jesus sandaled feet tread upon the dusty trails of this earth; He was a man without great wealth. In Luke 9:58 Jesus says, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” Jesus did not even have a house. While Jesus was a man of no wealth, He was a man of unsurpassable, immense, irresistible worth paid the supreme cost of our sin at the Cross! The cost was much higher than we could ever pay. God’s holiness demanded perfection. God’s justice demanded satisfaction. God’s overwhelming, superabundant grace demanded that He provide for us the means of mercy in Jesus Christ!
What we could not do for ourselves and what divine perfection required, God Himself provided for us. Today, we follow a Lord, Jesus Christ, who is worthy to be praised, worthy of adoration, and was indeed worthy to pay the penalty for our sin. In Christ, we find true worth and genuine eternal wealth!