Because I am God, your personal God, The Holy of Israel, your Savior.

I paid a huge price for you: all of Egypt, with rich Cush and Seba thrown in! Isaiah 43:3 The Message

Sometimes you need an image to realize what God has truly accomplished in your life. Exiles and refugees don’t exactly view themselves as being priceless. They often live in fear of being caught and having nothing to live on. In today’s language this is called cheap labor. You’re hired to do the job done for far less than you are worth. And you’re supposed to be grateful you get something. The Israelites were treated that way long before Christ, the Savior, was born. They were exiled because their “God” was angry with them. The few left behind were homeland refugees fending for themselves. They weren’t a threat to anybody. All they had was a Holy Promise, by a Holy God, and His Word that a Savior was on the way.

What are you worth? More than you could ever imagine. God could have “bought” you for pennies on the dollar, and yet, He emptied His treasury through His Son. His life became the buy-back price. High price? When you think about His life and blood and how it paid for every second of your life, every sin, and every day until you see Him face to face, inexhaustible riches means God can never exhaust His generosity of grace. The Apostle Paul never got over what the riches of Christ did in his life. When you’ve been infected with the grace of God, you won’t either. You’ll change, however slowly, because Jesus paid you up. Were you worth it? God can’t stop smiling over all His purchases. You’re alive today with a story to share. It only takes a moment…

And so here I am, preaching and writing about things that are way over my head, the inexhaustible riches and generosity of Christ. My task is to bring out in the open and make plain what God, who created all this in the first place, has been doing in secret and behind the scenes all along. Ephesians 3:8-9 The Message