And I saw and heard the sound of many angels around the throne, and of the four living creatures and of the elders, and their number was ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, "Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing." Rev. 5:11, 12.
Jesus is truly worthy. Not only was He the active agent in Creation (Rev. 4:11; John 1:3), but He powerfully intervened to redeem that creation at the cross, the event celebrated so loudly in this chapter of Revelation. What is exciting about this is that the value that He has by right can also become ours by redemption (Rev. 5:9, 10). We can join the angels in celebrating His worth when we see how it makes all the difference in our lives.
A fundamental need of all human beings is to have a sense of great value. But how much is a person worth? It depends on the context. If someone were to melt me down to the chemicals my body consists of, I'm told that I would be worth about $12 (make it $13, since I've gained a little weight in recent years). But the employer of the average American values him or her at a much higher level than that, something like $50,000 a year. But suppose you were a great basketball player such as Shaquille O'Neal. Suddenly the value jumps to tens of millions of dollars a year. And if you were the nerdy designer of the operating system on most of the world's computers, you would be valued at tens of billions of dollars (Bill Gates)!
You see, we are always valued in terms of others. But according to the Bible human value is infinitely higher than what we assign to each other. Scripture tells us that Jesus is worth the whole universe (He made it), yet He knows all about us and loves us as we are. His death on the cross established the value of the human individual. When the Creator of he universe and everyone in it (including all the great athletes and movie stars that people often worship) decides to die for you and me, it places an infinite worth on our lives. And since the resurrected Jesus will never die again, my value is secure in Him as long as I live.
Let's put it another way. A baseball in my hands is worth about $5. But a baseball in Alex Rodriguez' hands is worth about $25 million. A golf club in my hands is worth $50. A gold club in Tiger Woods' hands is worth millions of dollars. A stick in my hands will keep an angry dog from biting me, while the same stick in Moses' hands parted the Red Sea. Nails in my hands might produce a birdhouse. Nails in Jesus' hands led to salvation for the world. You could say it all depends on whose hands each of those objects is in.
Lord Jesus, You are the most genuinely valuable person in the universe. Help me to seek my true value in Your hands and not in the fickle affirmations of others.
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