DAILY DEVOTIONAL – October 14, 2019

“God’s Adjusted Value” 

Prayer:  Heavenly Father, we thank You that we can call you Father.  In our sinfulness we have given You every reason not to receive us or hear us or save us, but as Your Word reveals You are a God of love; You are love.  Thank You for not judging us according to what we have deserved but instead according to what Christ earned and did in our place on the cross.  In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Scripture: Matthew 20:28

The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Devotion – “God’s Adjusted Value”

Having spent quite a few years involved in the wedding music industry I often networked and spent time with a lot of wedding planners and other wedding professionals.  I have heard countless stories about all of the crazy things that can go wrong at weddings and the absolutely crazy things people can do both in planning for and while attending such an emotionally charged event.  As soon as you think you have heard it all, however, that’s when a story like the one that was released in The Metro newspaper in the UK comes along.

Names were not listed in the article for obvious reasons, but here is what happened.  A certain wedding guest, who was an ex-colleague and close friend of the newlywed couple, gave to them as a wedding gift a check for £100 – which is about $130 in US dollars.  I don’t know about you, but that seems like a more than reasonable and kind gift to give a newlywed couple, don’t you?  Well, apparently the newlyweds didn’t think so.  A couple of days after the wedding, this guest was contacted by not-so-happy couple and was told that their gift wasn’t generous enough.

The unnamed guest posted to an online forum asking for advice on how to respond.  In that post she revealed how the couple, who had asked for cash gifts, had emailed to say they were ‘surprised’ by her contribution and suggested an ‘adjustment.’

The guest also shared part of the email she received which said, “We were surprised that your contribution didn’t seem to match the warmth of your good wishes on our big day.  In view of your own position, if you wanted to send any adjustment it would be thankfully received.”

The wedding guest assumed that the reference to her “own position” was in regard to a recent inheritance she received.  Apparently, the newlywed couple were using a sliding scale system in order to determine the value of someone’s generosity to them!

Wow.  I just can’t imagine having the nerve that this newlywed couple had in order to write such an audacious email.  The saddest part of this story is the fact that this couple clearly has their priorities way out of whack, and to go into a marriage with that kind of petty and material view of generosity I fear only spells disaster for their marriage.

Could you imagine if God were to evaluate our lives, or our worth, or the value of our worship and gifts with a sliding scale as this newlywed couple did?  What if God were to send us a letter saying, “Hi Eric, I appreciate your effort in trying to be faithful to me and you certainly have a desire to be saved and go to heaven, but I gotta be honest, what you have to offer me isn’t quite amounting to enough.  After all, I brought you into existence and I gave you this wonderful planet to enjoy and food to eat and a family and friends and the list goes on…and let us not forget that I gave you my One and Only Son who suffered and died for you.  Help me help you here Eric.  If you want to get into heaven I would suggest an adjustment to the gifts you have been offering me.  A few more good works would certainly help, and no doubt an extra 5%-7% in your tithing each month would go a long way in making me feel like you love me enough.”

No doubt that these newlyweds WERE out of line in their tit-for-tat and ungrateful judgement of their guest’s generosity.  However, the truth is, God would be completely justified if He were to send any of us a letter like the one I imagined.

Everything good we have comes from God.  We live and have a life to enjoy only because of His creative love.  God had no reason other than His love to bring us into being, and we certainly have given Him no reason to continue to love us.  Each of us have become corrupt in our sinfulness.  On our own, we have nothing to offer God that would in the very least convince Him that we are worth saving.  What gift could we ever give to the God and Creator of all things?  What do we have that He doesn’t, or that He needs?  Nothing.  We have nothing to offer God.  Not even a life time of our best works could ever repay Him.

And it is precisely because of this fact that we call God’s love and grace, amazing.  It is because we have nothing in ourselves to offer God that we stand amazed in awe and wonder by the fact that God did not have the response of the newlywed couple in the UK, but instead wrote us a letter that says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”  In fact, rather than sending us a letter demanding we pay God the debt we owe Him, the debt of righteousness we owe Him because of our sin and rebellion, God wrote a letter saying that He has already sent His Son Jesus to settle our debt.  Jesus Christ was perfectly righteous.  We were made perfectly, and even warned that sin would bring death.  We have all sinned and brought death to what God made to live.  We owe God a life, our life, and God would have been completely justified in collecting that debt from us personally.  But God so loves us, that He sent Christ to give His perfectly righteous life in place of ours.  As Jesus Himself said in our verse for today, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”  Christ paid our ransom, our debt to God, and by faith in Christ as our only Savior and Redeemer, not only are we given eternal life but God now sees us as righteous in His eyes for the sake of His Son.

We could never give God the gifts He deserves or offer Him anything of value, and yet, because of His Son Jesus and through faith in Christ as our worthy sacrifice, God hears our prayers and receives our worship and only asks that we trust Him and love Him for the wonderful things He has done for us.  God is pleased with us when we rely on Jesus our Lord to offer God all that He deserves and when we live our life in faith toward Him and in love toward one another.

God bless you my friends, and remember that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow.  Amen.