The Price of Fur

Let me tell you about a lesson I learned the hard way… and it cost me about thirty bucks, a whole lot of manual labor, and just a little bit of my pride.

Growing up, my grandfather drilled something into me that never left: if you harvest it, you don’t waste it. You shoot a squirrel, you eat it. You take a deer, you use it. There’s no point in taking something if you’re not going to honor it. That’s not hunting… that’s waste. That’s poor stewardship.

So somewhere along the way, that mindset followed me right into coon hunting.

One year I got it in my head that I wasn’t just gonna skin a few hides, freeze them, and sell them green. Which was the easy way to sell hides but it didn’t pay as much. No sir, I was going all in. I started fleshing hides, stretching them out, drying them right. I mean I worked those things like I was opening up a high-end fur business… problem is, my “shop” smelled like a jobsite johnny next to a Taco Bell in mid-summer.

That season I worked over 60 hides. If you’ve never fleshed a coon, just know this… they are greasy. Not “grab a napkin” greasy… I’m talking “this might ruin your outlook on life” greasy. I spent hours bent over that board scraping and working, thinking the whole time, “Boy, this is gonna pay off.”

So when the season ended, I loaded them all up and talked my wife into riding with me to the fur sale in Wytheville, VA. Now let me pause right there and say, God has a sense of humor when it comes to marriage. I’m about 90% redneck, 5% white trash, and 5% “we’ll figure it out when we get there.” My wife… somewhere in her family line there’s got to be royalty. Grace, class, put together. I have told people we are green acres through and through.

We walked into that fur sale like two different planets collided. I felt right at home. She looked like she had been accidentally dropped off into a documentary. I do remember she was the only person at the fur sale with capri pants and wedges. But she stood there supporting me anyway… and that’s a sermon all by itself.

So, I laid those hides out on the table and stepped back, already spending the money in my head. Then the number came a whopping $128. About $2 a hide. Gas cost me about $100. We ate twice. By the end of the day, I hadn’t made money… I paid for the privilege of being there. I had worked myself to death and I owe for it.

Now most folks would walk away from that thinking, “Well that was a waste.”

But standing there, looking at that pile of hides I had poured hours into, the Lord started whispering something a whole lot bigger than fur prices. See, in my mind, those hides were valuable. I had worked for them. Sweated over them and put quite a bit of time into them. I thought surely that counted for something.

But when they got put on the table in front of someone who actually knew what they were worth… they didn’t measure up like I thought they would.

Do you know that’s exactly how our works look before God. The Bible says in Isaiah 64:6, “all our righteous deeds are like a filthy rag.”

Not just our sin… our righteous deeds. The things we’re proud of. The things we think ought to earn us something. We lay them on the table thinking, “This ought to count. God will count this to me for good.”

And heaven looks at them and says, “That’s not the currency that gets you in.” It’s like a token at a Chuck E Cheese worthless in the real world.

You go all the way back to Genesis 4, and you see Cain and Abel. Abel brought a sacrifice… blood… something that cost life. Cain brought what he had worked for… fruit from the ground.

One brought faith.

One brought effort.

And God accepted Abel… and rejected Cain.

Not because God didn’t appreciate hard work, but because salvation has never been about what man can produce. It’s always been about what God provides. Cain’s offering looked good to him… just like my hides looked good to me. But it didn’t meet the standard.

A whole lot of people are stacking up their lives like I stacked those hides.

“I’m a good person.”

“I work hard.”

“I don’t bother nobody.”

“I’ve done more good than bad.”

And one day they’re gonna lay all that down before a holy God… thinking it’s gonna carry weight. But it won’t. Because the standard isn’t “better than average.” The standard is perfection.

That’s why the Bible says in Ephesians 2:8–9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Not your doing.

Not your effort.

Not your hides on the table.

Romans 5:1: "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."

It’s a gift through faith and the only thing that’s ever been fully accepted in that throne room is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Where Cain brought his work, Christ brought His blood. Where Abel pointed forward, Jesus fulfilled it.

So here I was, standing at a folding table in Wytheville, realizing something that took me a lot longer than it should have. All that work… all that effort… all that pride, and it still wasn’t enough.

And friend, if you’re trusting in your works today, I say this with all the love I’ve got—It’s not enough. But the good news is, you don’t have to bring your own hides to the table.

The Lamb of God has been laid on the cross and found priceless!

God already provided the only offering He will ever accept. And His name is Jesus.

So save your time and trust Jesus not works!