Al had always been interested in elephants. Every chance he got he’d go to visit them. He knew they loved to eat fresh lettuce, so one day he bought a big bag full of heads of lettuce and took it to the elephants.
All the elephants crowded over to the side of their enclosure where Al was breaking up the heads. They began to stretch their long, flexible trunks through the bars, but they couldn’t quite reach the lettuce. Before Al had it all ready, he was very much surprised to feel a big load of loose hay fall right on his head from the trunk of one of the elephants.
“Hey, what’s that elephant doing?” Al asked the elephants’ trainer.
The trainer laughed and answered, “She likes the looks of your lettuce and is offering you some of her hay in exchange for it.”
Now, that was very nice of the elephant, wasn’t it? She may have thought that Al would be able to eat the hay just as she did.
Al appreciated the elephant’s offer, but he hadn’t asked for the hay, and he couldn’t use it. When people think they can offer God the exchange of the good and kind things they have done to cancel their sins, they are acting like this elephant. The exchange is unsuitable. One day the psalmist asked himself, “What shall I render [give] unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me?” (Psalm 116:1212What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me? (Psalm 116:12)). Then he thought that over and decided that he had nothing that was good enough to be a suitable gift for our wonderful and holy God, so he said, “I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord” (vs. 13). That’s what God wants each one of us to do: take what He is offering. Only the Lord Jesus’ work on Calvary’s cross can cancel our sins, because even our best works are contaminated with sin. Isaiah 64:66But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. (Isaiah 64:6) tells us that “we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.”
Al was quite startled when he felt that hay falling on his head. It wasn’t what he expected, needed or wanted, but he had brought a treat for the elephants, so he brushed off the hay and fed them the lettuce. They quickly gobbled it up and seemed to enjoy it.
Our God is a giving God, and He wants us to take His offer to remove our sins through the death of the Lord Jesus on the cross. “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:77But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7)).
Will you just take God’s offer?
ML-04/11/1999