Daily Devotions
What You Are Worth to God?
Reading for May 8th: 1 Chronicles 22-24
With great pains I have provided for the house of the LORD 100,000 talents of gold...
1 Chronicles 22:14
How much is a 100,000 talents of gold?
Well, a talent is an ancient unit of weight that most scholars estimate to have been about 70 pounds! Can you imagine what 70 pounds of gold would be worth, and then what that is multiplied by 100,000?
I have and it comes out to be well over 100 billion dollars worth of gold!
So how much was the temple worth to David? A lot! Even to a king that's a lot.
The temple Solomon built with all of that gold no longer stands. It's been destroyed. But another temple stands today which is much more glorious than Solomon's. It is not a physical temple, but spiritual one made of "living stones" (1 Peter 2:5).
As God's people, we are those living stones being "chosen and precious" to our God (1 Peter 2:4). We are worth a lot more to God than Solomon's temple, for we were ransomed "not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot." (1 Peter 1:18-19)
So how much are we, as this spiritual temple, worth to God? We must be worth a lot. And in our case, the King didn't just empty his treasury. He gave up the most precious thing he had!
Father God, how can we begin to thank You for the gift of your Son! We cannot understand how we can possibly be worth that much to you!
