While putting on my Skechers the other day, I found in the left shoe a dime. How it got there I don’t know. But I do know how the stater or shekel came to be in the mouth of the first fish Peter caught after discussing with Jesus the temple tax as recorded in Matthew 17. His Master performed a miracle.
That incident has much to teach us. Let me suggest two truths we may draw from it. First, it seems likely that the coin was a Tyrian shekel. On its obverse (front side) there appeared an image of Melkart, the patron god of Tyre who was said to rule the sea. Sometimes he was depicted astride a sea horse. But who is the true ruler of the sea and all its creatures? Messiah Jesus, the One who created them. I’d like to see old Melkart put a shekel (the exact amount needed for Peter and the Master’s temple tax) in the mouth of the first fish Peter hooked. The gods men create in their own image are deaf, dumb and blind. Only the triune God of the Bible possesses omnipotence. The psalmist wrote, “All the gods of the peoples are idols” (96:5). This word translated “idols” literally means “nothings.”
Secondly, I observe from Matthew 17 that, while Peter was not expected to come up with the shekel, Jesus did instruct him to catch the fish in whose mouth He had placed it. What God provides we must lay hold of by faith. When I came to Psalm 104 in my devotional reading recently, I underlined verse 28: “Thou dost give to them, they gather it up.” Giving on God’s side and gathering on man’s. Both are necessary if our needs are to be met. Hebrews 4:2 says, “We have had good news [the promise of rest] preached to us, just as they (the wilderness generation of Israelites) also; but the word they heard did not profit them because it was not united by faith.”
No faith–no rest. Remember, it was not until the priests carrying the ark actually dipped their feet in the edge of the water that God miraculously opened a path through the Jordan.
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