24 When Jesus and his followers came to Capernaum, the men who collected the Temple tax came to Peter. They asked, “Does your teacher pay the Temple tax?”
25 Peter answered, “Yes, Jesus pays the tax.”
Peter went into the house, but before he could speak, Jesus said to him, “What do you think? The kings of the earth collect different kinds of taxes. But who pays the taxes—the king’s children or others?”
26 Peter answered, “Other people pay the taxes.”
Jesus said to Peter, “Then the children of the king don’t have to pay taxes. 27 But we don’t want to upset these tax collectors. So go to the lake and fish. After you catch the first fish, open its mouth and you will find a coin. Take that coin and give it to the tax collectors for you and me.”
Read Matthew 17:24-27 in context and/or in other translations on BibleGateway.com!
While reading about Peter’s encounter with the temple tax collectors, a question entered my mind that completely changed how I saw this event, and this new angle shows an amazing picture of God’s love for all of us as His children.
When Jesus gives Peter instructions in the last verse, we begin to see something incredible. After explaining how the king’s children are exempt from paying taxes, Jesus continues by saying, “But we don’t want to upset these tax collectors. So go to the lake and fish. After you catch the first fish, open its mouth and you will find a coin. Take that coin and give it to the tax collectors for you and me.” (v. 27)
This set of instructions is surprisingly simple, yet detailed. Peter is to go fishing and the first fish he catches will have a coin in its mouth that is valuable enough to pay the temple tax for two people.
The question that entered my mind while reading this is “Who ultimately paid the temple tax?” While Peter made the final delivery to the tax collectors, the coin that was taken did not come from the disciples own reserves of money. Peter didn’t ask Judas Iscariot for a coin from their donations to use for this tax.
Instead, for this to have happened exactly like Jesus had instructed, a coin had to have fallen out of a boat, and then a fish would have had to catch it on its descent towards the bottom of the lake. I wonder whether the fish thought the coin was smaller or whether its eyes were bigger than its throat, but in either case the coin was big enough for the fish’s mouth but too big for it to swallow.
Then, for this scenario to work, the fish wouldn’t spit out the coin, but instead swim over to where Peter was fishing and also try to eat what Peter was using as bait – at the exact time Peter was down fishing following receiving these instructions from Jesus.
There are too many unlikely-to-happen details in this event to really come up with a good statistic of the chances of this happening. This was an impossible-to-predict event.
The other option we have is that on the way up, an angel added a coin to the mouth of the fish that Peter had caught. While not as glamorous, this is actually more plausible than the other options.
However this event unfolded, the inescapable conclusion we come to is that God was the only one who could have orchestrated this event! This means that God paid our temple tax, and He did this through Jesus’ death on the cross for sins that He did not commit. This short fish story contains the entire gospel message, and it shares how much God values each of us!
This thought was inspired by studying the Walking With Jesus “Reflective Bible Study” package. To discover insights like this in your own study time, click here and give Reflective Bible Study a try today!
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