From Matthew 14:34-36 / Just the Fringe

In this small portion, almost an aside, are still some blessed lessons to take in.

Note first: How sad it is that some only want enough of Jesus to have their immediate needs met. Just the fringe is all we want. Not His Gospel. Not His person. Not to know Him, seek and walk with Him. Just fix my felt need, and let me go on my way.

It reminds me of Wilbur Rees famous poem:

I would like to buy $3.00 worth of God, please—not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine.

I don’t want enough of God to make me love an enemy or pick beets with a migrant; I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3.00 worth of God, please.

Father, please work in my heart so as to not let this be the case with me. I know at times it has been. Forgive me. I repent. Teach my heart to seek you for you. I do not want your fringe, I want to want you with all my heart.

Note second: We can receive blessings and even miracles from our brush with Christ, the Gospel, His Church and the Father – and leave with nothing more. Just because we have received a miracle, says nothing about the state of our souls. If we have not come to Him for salvation – we may find our few remaining years easier, but what is that in comparison with an eternity shut out from His presence?

Later, when Jesus addresses the battle we must prosecute against the remnants of indwelling sin (Matt. 18) He will tell us that it is better to enter life (Heaven) missing a foot or a hand or an eye, than to be thrown whole into the hell of fire.

Note third: How abundant, free and gracious is His mercy, in spite of men’s surface response to it.

The rain falls on the just and the unjust.

God’s common grace sweeps the earth with the miracles and blessings of modern medicine, scientific breakthroughs against plagues and disease, and countless inventions which add comfort, ease and pleasure to our lives. The entire race is abundantly blessed. The proof is all around us.

God is a giving God.

God is an abundant God.

God is a merciful God, to the just and the unjust.

God is a patient God as so much time has been afforded to let the Gospel go out into all the ends of the earth – as He withholds His just and final judgment.

And if He is so good, so that even if we but touch the hem of His garment we will be blessed, then how much more is ready and waiting for those who press on to know Him, walk with Him, obey Him and trust Him?

Truly, the half of His glory has not even yet be told, let alone received.