If we are not busy living intentionally and zealously for Christ’s cause, being about our Master’s will, we are, in a sense, not truly alive. Let us not forget to pay heed to the times in which we live and take courage to act in response.

Some passages of Scripture are rich with context, color, and vibrant detail that stir our imaginations—fountains from which we drink time and time again in our devotions, sermons, and study.

Then there are other texts that conspicuously seem to lack any real context, scattered like so many Easter eggs across the pages of Scripture, that don’t often enter our minds or figure prominently in the Christian content we consume. But when they do, they challenge us to slow down, think deeply, and guess at exactly what was meant by the author.

One such gem buried in 1 Chronicles is this striking statement about the sons of Issachar:

Of Issachar, men who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do, 200 chiefs, and all their kinsmen under their command. (1 Chronicles 12:32)

What does it mean that these men knew the times and how Israel should act? We simply aren’t told—rather, we’re left to sanctified imagination.

I can’t help but contrast these faithful sons of Issachar with a very different group mentioned in the Bible, though separated geographically, historically, and culturally: the last-days scoffers of whom the Apostle Peter warns in 2 Peter 3:3-7. Unlike the Issacharites, Peter’s scoffers deny the reality of God’s past judgments in history and insist that the world’s status quo will continue in perpetuity. And rather than knowing the right thing to do as a result, they persist in following their own ungodly desires all the way to perdition.

Whether you live and minister in a context marked by ease and affluence, poverty and suffering, darkness and idolatry, or revival and light, the Word remains the same: we are called to be like sons of Issachar—men and women who understand the times and act accordingly. Simply put, we as Great Commission servants must know what time it is in the world around us. We can interpret the weather; how much more so should we read the signs of the cultures surrounding us and discern God’s work in them (Luke 12:56)? We must grasp both God’s broad purposes for history—that eternity is ever looming closer, and that the present order will someday give way to new heavens and a new earth, free from sin and vain pursuit—as well as his specific purposes for our moment in the story: raising up a people for himself from among the nations, putting down proud peoples who reject him, sowing seeds of revival, sanctifying his global church, and advancing the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ through the proclamation of the gospel.

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