It was God through Joshua who allotted Jacob’s son Issachar the land it got in Canaan. It was prime farmland, so the tribe of Issachar became farmers, and was that by God’s design too?
Because as farmers they were very much in tune with nature, in how to read the weather, when and where to plant crops to flourish at their best, and what the soil needed to increase its fertility. They learnt to read the signs, or as Jesus put it in Matthew 16:3, when asked by some Pharisees and Sadducees for a sign, he told them, “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky.” They could tell if the weather would be fair or stormy (2). And so could the tribe of Issachar. Being an agricultural community farming the best land in the country, they would have become highly skilled readers of the weather, and aligning their actions with it.
It sounds like this really was by God’s design then, because the tribe of Issachar became known for “understanding the times and knowing what Israel should do” (1 Chronicles 12:32). At a time when Israel was in a state of confusion, having lost their king and being turfed out of their land, God had gifted the 200 chiefs of Issachar with a clear insight into where he was taking Israel next, so the other tribes could confidently fall in line with it.
So has God gifted and prepared some Issachars today too – people who have an insight into what God is up to in our world and know precisely what’s needed to align ourselves with it?
Well, Jesus expected it of those in his day who were supposed to know “the signs of the times” in Matthew 16:3. But they totally missed the obvious signs of that time, that Jesus was the one God was revealing himself and his purpose in. It’s not surprising, then, that Paul kept asking the Father to give the people in his care “the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better,” Ephesians 1:17. Meaning that any of us can be an Issachar, and know what God is up to and align ourselves with it.
So we’re paddling in the same canoe as donkeys and the tribe of Issachar. God equipped them with the ability to tune in to their circumstances and know the wisest action to take, and now he’ll do the same thing for us, just as he did for Jesus, so that like him we are “Completing what God’s given us to do”….(next blog)
Buck To Basics 