Do Your Part!

“After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma temple tax came to Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?”

“Yes, he does,” he replied.

When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. “What do you think, Simon?” he asked. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own children or from others?”

“From others,” Peter answered.

“Then the children are exempt,” Jesus said to him.

“But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line.

Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin.

Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”

Matthew 17:24-27

 

This miraculous provision was certainly going to leave an impression with Peter that God was more than able to meet his material needs.

But just a thought – I wonder if Peter were a modern day car mechanic might Jesus have sent him to a garage and had him look inside the tailpipe of an automobile in that business for the money?

I find it curious that Jesus sent Peter back to his work-a-day-world as a fisherman to find the coin.

Could Jesus be showing Peter that when he, Peter, partnered with Jesus even the mundane can become miraculous.

Even our occupation, trade or profession can be a place that God uses to supernaturally provide for our needs.

Peter certainly never opened the mouths of fish he caught with the expectation that in every one of them he would find a coin.

And we certainly cannot assume that this supernatural tax payment was ever met again in quite the same way.

That is part of the wonder of our God.  

He will turn the ordinary into the extraordinary.

The mundane into the miraculous.

The simple into the supernatural.

But He chooses to do these things partnering with us.

Peter could easily have walked out of the house, said to himself

“That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard!” and never gone fishing that day.

But if he had, he would have missed the exhilarating joy of partnering with God in what seemed the most unusual of ways and seeing God meet his need.

You and I are called to partner with God.

Will you do that?

Will you follow His instructions in this partnership even when they seem a little ‘out there’?

He is waiting for you to do your part!