Issachar; or, Couching Between the Borders
Genesis xlix. 14, 15.
Issachar is a bony ass, couching down between the borders :* and he saw rest, that is was good; and the land, that it was pleasant; so he bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant unto tribute.
The blessing which Jacob uttered, at his death, from which the words of the text are taken, contains wonderful things in several of its mysterious announcements. Primarily it refers, of course, to the future temporal condition of the twelve tribes. But if we apply the description
* The authorised English version has it “between two hir. densP The word iD’^^&’jp/afl thus translated, occurs only once more in the Hebrew Scriptures, namely in the song of Deborah, Judges V. 16, “Why abodest thou among the sheep/olds,” &c., where it may equally be rendered, “between the borders;” namely those of Moab and Canaan, between which the tribe of Reuben, there addressed, was situated. The word in the Lutheran version is “Z’orers,” in Gen. xlix., and “/oZ<^s” or “jpms” (for sheep,) in Judges v. It appears to be derived from MBtli to put or set in order, to dispose, ordain, or arrange. Hence Parkhurst renders tyrnpthe regular divisions (in a stall or stable;) that is, the bars or boards which divide it into distinct standings, Genesis xlix. 14, also sheepfolds or pens for sheep, Judges v. 16. — Translator.
to teach us spiritual lessons, we may obtain many important hints of instruction. For, if we consider nothing more than Issachar after the flesh, we shall have done with the text almost immediately upon noticing it as a prediction that Issachar should become a tribe of laborious husbandmen. But there is a spiritual Issachar, a borderer between good and evil; and would to God that his tents were no where to be found in our Church. With this Issachar. or in other words, the wavering and undecided, for the description of whose character we find appropriate words in the text, let us now endeavour to become better acquainted. We shall notice,
I. Where he couches down. TI. How he came into this situation. III. The toils and dangers he finds in it.
I. Issachar has here a strange and unprepossessing appellation, that of “a bony ass.” Judah is more agreeably styled a young lion; Naphtali, a fleet hind let loose; Joseph, a fruitful bough by a well; or, an olive tree by a fountain, whose branches spread over the wall; Jonathan, the friend of David, is compared by him to an eagle; the Shulamite is compared, by the inspired writer of the Song of Songs, to a dove; and Israel is compared to a lily. All these names have n pleasanter sound; but that of a “bony ass” so lowers our idea of the person intended, that we are not apt to desire a more particular acquaintance with him. But who shall say how many amongst ourselves may not be thus unflatteringly designated in various parts of the book of God? We shall see why to the spiritual Issachar this name may be given, when we have learnt the characteristics which belong to him.
Where do we find him? It is between the borders. He is couched down between the borders. Now, if we give a spiritual application to these words, we may take them as describing an evil and unhappy condition. How awfully does the Lord rebuke those whose hearts are halting in indecision — who are neither cold nor hot! To each of such lukewarm ones he declares, “I will spue thee out of my mouth.” He would that they were either one thing or the other; either cold or hot. Indecision is to Him an abomination. Observe how he speaks of those who neither declare themselves for him, nor for the world; who neither openly renounce him, nor stand forth decidedly for him; but waver between two parties — that of his friends and that of the enemies of his cross. All such he positively denounces as his enemies, and at length will treat them as such. “He that is not with me, is against me; and he that gathereth not with me, scattereth.”. Suppose he were now visibly to come amongst our churches, to mark how many thousands of those would be regarded as his messengers, have couched or settled down between the borders of his pure gospel, and those of a self-invented human wisdom, far estranged from God; what would he say? Can we not anticipate the verysentence from his lips, “I would that ye were cold or hot; whereas now ye are neither the one nor the other!” Far better were it that they were declared infiels at once, (for then the simple flock might be aware of them,) than such pernicious middle men, halting between two opinions.
Where, then, is it that the spiritual borderer couches down, and between what borders has he pitched his tent? Stricdy speaking, he is not one of those who are neither for nor against religion, neither Christian nor heathen. He is professedly for that which is right. He appears, indeed, to many, to have pitched his tent within the kingdom of God, and yet he is in a very deplorable situation. He has settled down, as it were, between Canaan and Egypt. He cannot exactly be classed with the people of the world; but still less can he be numbered with the children of God. He cannot properly be placed in the same rank with the crooked and perverse generation; but still less can he be accounted one of the chosen generation and royal priesthood. He is couched down between the borders of the kingdom of grace and the kingdom of Belial. In this unhappy middle situation he can never sit down with the subjects of the former; but he will perish and be consumed with the subjects of the latter.
Let us now examine his state more particularly, that we may fully understand it, both externally and spiritually. His exterior appearance in his life and conversation speaks fairly, and very much prepossesses us in his favour. Did you expect to find him in the counsel of the ungodly, in the way of sinners, or in the seat of the scornful? Any thing but this: — to suppose such a thing of him would be to do him great injustice. He has escaped far away from such regions of Sodom, and separated himself from communion with its inhabitants. He no longer burns incense on the high places or in the groves: the assemblies of those who drink iniquity like water, are to him an abomination and despicable. You will never find him in the chambers of wantonness, nor in the resorts of riot; never where the worldling, infatuated and blind, gives the rein to debauchery, and dances to any measures which the god of this world may appoint. He is no partner with those who say, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die;” neither with the swine does he wallow in the mire. Equally mistaken will you be, if you expect to find him associated with those self-called moralists, who are satisfied with regulating their outward conduct by the rules of civil order, but make no profession of religion. He is not one of those who express a disgust for what some are
30 tssachar; or,
pleased to call hypocrisy and preciseness; persons who are satisfied with their self-imagined integrity, but neglect God’s word, authority, and ordinances; who dislike prayer and thanksgiving to God, as useless and antiquated ceremonies; who deride or pity those that make a conscience of such things, which they would leave only to children and weak persons. No; you must look for him among those who are quiet in the land; who professedly make a conscience of worshipping God: you must expect to find him where the name of the Lord is preached and called upon; where the banner of the cross is lifted hiffh: where confession is made that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father; among those who teach and admonish one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and lift up holy hands to heaven; where men feed in the green pastures of the everlasting word, and drink in life and satisfaction from the livins” spring of the sure mercies of David. There shall you find him: there hath he his tent and habitation; he dwelleth among the saints, and is to be met with in their assemblies.
But how is this? Must he not then be a hypocrite? This is too hard a thing to say of him. Hypocrites are another sort of people. But if he adhere to the true church, if he join himself to those children of God, with whom the world will have nothing to do, and if he do this with sincerity and without hypocrisy, what more, you ask, is required of him? Ah! my brethren, very much more is required of him; every thing which essentially belongs to a state of grace. It is true, he lives in connexion with God’s people, but only externally: not in spirit and in truth. He is no living member of that mystical body, of which Christ is the Head: though joined to it outwardly, he is not incorporated with it vitally. He is no fruitful branch of the true Vine; he thrives not by its sap and life. Though externally allied to it by some human and perishable contrivance, (as fruit tied upon a bough to please children,) he has not vitally grown upon it in the Spirit. It is true, if we look at his understanding, we see nothing of Egyptian darkness there. He is acquainted with the theory of the gospel, and shows that he has been under good instruction. He knows much of the Bible by heart; is conversant with devotional writings, and can relate much of persons awakened and born again. But all this is nothing more than an artificial repository, a mere human work, a stock of knowledge acquired by reading and hearing, and elaborated by thought and reflection. He has had it put into him, preached into him, inured into him. But it amounts, after all, to nothing better than an acquired habit, inasmuch as he is not enlightened by the Holy Spirit; he is not taught of God. Hence all the knowledge he has obtained is deposited in his mind like dead capital without interest; or, like food undigested, and never converted to the purposes of life. His spikenard yields no fragrance.
If we look at his conduct we can point out nothing in it that, strictly speaking, contradicts his profession. His character is unblemished in the eyes of men: he lives quiet and unobtrusive; his habits are domestic; he is an honourable man, and reputable; he is industrious and orderly; frequents only Christian societ)^, and despises the gay follies of the world. But, after all, tell me, my brethren, is this the full extent of that life and conversation which God intends, when, speaking to Abraham, he says, “I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect?” Or is this what Isaiah means, when he exclaims, “O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord?” Or, is it the meaning of the apostle, when he says, “Our conversation is in heaven?” and again, “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit?” Is there in the life of such an individual any fruit of the Spirit, or does it run along like a clear brook, flowing from the ground of the renewed heart? Alas! it is no such thing. It is partly the effect of good education and habit, or of frequenting good society: partly a presumptive and eclectic spirituality, an acquired goodness of his own; a work which the Holy Spirit will never acknowledoe as of His operation, because he verily hath borne no part in it.
Again; if we look at such a person’s religious exercises, all appears very pleasing to the eye. But are those prayers which he daily offers up, are those praises in which he joins with the great congregation, or at home with his family, to be regarded as the incense which is first given of God, and then in grateful sacrifice returned to him; having been kindled by the Holy Spirit himself, and presented to the Lord, in the censer of a broken and contrite heart? Oh no! he prays, because he has been taught that it is right to do so; not because he cannot live without prayer. He prays; but not the Spirit of Christ within him.
How pitiable then is his settled condition between the borders! He is a nominal Christian without a birth into a new life; he acknowledges the corruption of human nature without feeling his own; he is conversant with spiritual things, but not truly enlightened in them; he professes to believe in Jesus, but is insensible of his need of Him; he numbers himvself among the saints, without being one; he knows how to talk of a life of grace, without having entered upon it; he imagines his life and conversation to be qmte Christian, and yet is in thought and disposition no better than a natural man. His heart and mind are unchanged. He has not “put off the old man with his deeds, and put on the new man, which, after the image of God, is created in righteousness and true holiness.” Creation of every kind is the work of God; but such a person’s Christianity is a work of his own. The old man in his nature has put on the garb of piety; and that is all. Such is his condition. He is gone out of the world in some sense; but he is far from having really entered into the kingdom of grace. His exterior is Christian-like, and his manner of talking and acting is correct; but he wants the life of God in his soul; his heart is not renewed. He is “couched down between the borders.”
n. How did he come into this condition? “He saw rest, that it was good; and the land, that it was pleasant.”
What he has become, is not by our heavenly Father drawing him, neither is it by the call of his grace in Christ, nor by the special operation of the Holy Spirit. He is become what he is by his own choice, by the suggestion of his own mind, and by an incitement ol his own natural heart. Was it the sorrow for sin that occasioned him embracing the gospel? Was it the dread of Sinai’s reiterated thunder, or of the curses pronounced from Mount Ebal? Was it any real longing for redemption, any anxious concern to obtain spiritual health and deliverance? Nothing of the kind can be asserted respecting him; for very different desires and interests moved him to become a professed Christian.
“He saw rest,” or repose, “that it was good.”
What rest or repose? Was it rest for his soul ill Christ 7 Was it peace with God? Was it repose in the great Redeemer’s merits 7 Was it a release from the burden and curse of sin? Was it deliverance from the servile drudgery of legal bondage? Oh no! quite another repose attracted him, and provoked his longing desire. “He saw the land that it was pleasant.” What land? Was it that better country, namely, the heavenly? Was it that blissful and glorious region of light and love, in a superior state of being, unto which Jesus himself is the Way and the Door? Or, was it even that region of grace here on earth, wherein his people live by his dew and sunshine? Did his soul really desire this? Did he long after it? Nothing of the kind can be said of him. Very different inducements was he conscious of
It is sometimes one thing, and sometimes another, which leads persons of this character into their dubious situation between the borders. Some are attracted by the harmony and mutual love which they find among those who are quiet in the land. Such an one has perhaps had painful experience of the falsehood and selfishness of the world. He has learnt, to his cost, that persons without religious principle always prove unworthy of confidence, and that the world abounds with strife and rancour. He has looked for friends among them, and been miserably disappointed. He, therefore, turns his attention to the religious community. He observes how much real Christians appear to be of one heart and one soul; how they are united in affection and fidelity, and serve one another as brethren of the same family. This just suits his own taste and convenience. He sees all this, that it is good; and he resolves to join himself to the company of the godly.
Another has naturally a soft and yielding disposition. He is easily affected and influenced. He loves solemn sights and scenes, on account of the agreeable emotions which they excite within him. Hence he is charmed with the manner of life which he sees in the people of God; with the animated devotion of their worship; with the soothing and elevated strain of their singing and praying. He beholds the land that it is pleasant; and from his own reflection and feeling he says in his heart, “It is good to be here: — let us build tabernacles.”
Another has a natural inclination to thought and inquiry. This leads him to search the Scriptures, where he finds abundance for his mind to feed upon, and to exercise his quickness of understanding. With lively interest he gives himself to reading and research, and feels pleasure in his intercourse with those who revere the sacred volume, and make it the directory of their families and their lives. He becomes deeply interested in conversing with them upon Christian opinions and views; he enjoys religious dis-CLissions and conversations. Thus, from his own choice he joins the people of God, without having admitted into his heart, the seed of the new birth from the word of life.
Another, from being naturally gifted with a keen perception of what is intellectually beautif?.il, is charmed with the sublimity of the inspired writings. The moving descriptions, the luminous imagery, the parabolic language, the lovely and touching scenes with which Scripture abounds, beget in him a kind of enthusiasm. But then he can read, with the same enthusiasm, the splendid productions of profane poets; and it is evident that he joins Christian society as a mere matter of taste: as he evinces no conversioH to brokenness and contrition of heart. He has seen that, in the families of the pious, there is far more regularity and union, than among people of the world. In the peace, the quietness, the mutual affection, and the constant cheerfulness which he notices as so peculiar to them: in a word, in the blessing of God which he thinks he sees attending them, and which he considers tnust be upon them, and upon all their concerns, he finds something very desirable, especially when he contrasts their families with his own. He beholds this repose, that it is good. He is weary of the incessant noise and wrangling of persons immediately about him. He determines to reform his own family, by introducing religion into it; and he introduces it outwardly accordingly.
He adopts family reading, singing and prayer; he sees a check put upon the partings and petty discords which hitherto prevailed; the house is quite reformed: yes, indeed the house, but not the heart. The image, the frame-work of religion is here, but the true spirit and life of it are wanting. The outward man has abandoned the world; but the world has not abandoned the inward man. The dress is changed, but the person remains the same.
In such various ways men may be spiritually couching down between the borders. “He saly rest, that it was good; and the land, that it was pleasant.” Thus it may be no real longing for reconciliation with God, no hunger for Christ’s righteousness, no thirst for the graces of the Holy Spirit, which induces them to renounce the world, and to join the people of the Lord. The mere privileges and advantages belonging to the children of God in this life may have been all they have wished to share in; and for the sake of these, they may, simply of their natural mind, have chosen to become quiet, retired, and attentive to religious services, with a will-worship and pains-taking of their own. They undertake to be Christians, as they would undertake the business of a trade, or the study and practice of an art or science; and they easily learn to assume and decorate themselves with the exterior graces of Christianity. Only two things they appear to want; and with these, they want every thing which essentially constitutes a child of God; first, a broken, contrite heart, wherein alone the Lord will condescend to dwell; and secondly, the Spirit of Christ; concerning whom it is written, “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.”
Having thus learnt what is this situation between the borders, and how he came into it, let us,
III. In the last place, briefly notice the spiritual toils and pains that necessarily attend this state, as also the fearful perils which surround it.
This toilsome and harrassing condition is depicted in the words, “He bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant unto tribute.” Having bowed his shoulder to bear, he has a burden laid upon him, under which he sighs and groans; and this burden is — not the burden of sin! Would that he felt this, for his state would then soon begin to amend. But this burden is, alas! his Christianity itself: that notional Christianity, to the drudgery of which his own wisdom has allied him. Our blessed Saviour has said indeed, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light;” but the truth of this from personal experience, the self-enslaved borderer is at a loss to prove. Here then we are reminded of those words of the prophet Isaiah, “And it shall come to pass in that day,” (namely in the days of the new covenant,) “that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing,” Isa. x. 27. As the yoke upon the animal easily slips off, when its neck is well anointed with oil, so when we are anointed with the oil of grace and of the Holy Spirit, the spiritual burden begins to slip from off our shoulder, the law and service of God are no longer felt to be a galling and fretting yoke, but perfect freedom, delight, and joy. But Issachar being without this unction of the Holy One, his shoulder bows and sinks under its burden. He has not gone to the Lord Jesus with all his heart, as an empty vessel, broken open by repentance and a sense of want, to receive out of His fulness all needful grace and strenoth. Having converted himself J now he would become holy, and walk after the manner of Christians, at his own expense, and by his own endeavours. He would do as other Christians do, and he would rise in devotion as they; but he does not consider that he wants wings for the purpose. He would sing as they, and he would pray as they, but he wants incitement, delight, and breath for it. In this unhappy state, he would fulfil the law of God, but has no filial motive for doing it; no love, no cheerfulness, no strength. It is a vassal service, wherein he labours and pants; he disquieteth himself in vain with his will-worship, his selfedifying, his own self-dependent devices for holiness. His are pains without gains; work without wages.
Having thus “bow”ed his shoulder to bear,” he is “become a servant unto tribute.” This expression is mournfully appropriate. For his prayers morning and evening, his formal ejaculations before and after meals, hissino:ino:and devotional exercises, what are they but so many payments of tribute, which, having to bring it daily and duly, he brings, not with the cheerful freedom of a child of God, but like a bond-slave, with constraint and weariness! As he has never felt his need of the outpouring of the Spirit of grace and supplications, so he has never desired nor waited for it. Hence his religious exercises are forced, his holy services are extorted from him, by fear; all is mere human performance, because he lives not in the true union of spirit with Him who is the life of the soul. The services of those who are born again, are yielded from the heart, and flow from it as freely as streams from the fountain; but he is a well without water: how should any stream flow from thence! Feeling bound, at the return of set times and seasons, to pay his scot of prayer and religion, he brings his tribute money, casts it down at the Divine footstool, and renders, as he thinks, unto God, the things which are God’s. But the tribute money is stamped with a wrong impression; it bears the image and superscription of “the first man,” who “is of the earth, earthy;*’ not of “the Second Man,” who is the “Lord from heaven;” consequently it can never be deposited in God’s treasury. Lo, such is he! not a child in the family, but a poor, mean servant under tribute, who having nothing, yet is constrained to payment; and, which is worse than all, pays in coin that is refused and thrown back at his feet as base and counterfeit. He is a burden-bearer, labouring under the self-imposed drudgery of his own will- worship, and wearing out his days and strength under the fretting yoke of legal bondage, as ignorant of the cheerfulness and freedom of spiritual life, as is any poor beast of burden.
And oh, by what a variety of dangers is his soul surrounded! The very thought of these is sufficient to cause trembling of hands and sorrow of heart. For here is a person, who with all his miserable blindness, imagines himself actually within the kingdom of grace upon earth, and yet as truly belongs to “them that are without,” as do the grossest sinners of the world. He has succeeded tolerably well in conforming his exterior habits to those of the children of God; and thus he has fallen into the miserable error that he is really one of them. Moreover, he is often regarded and treated by them as one of themselves; and this serves to confirm him in his infatuation, so that he couches down the more securely between the borders. Thus he most pitiably imagines himself to be dwelling in Canaan, while his tent is at the ede of Tophet, and at the brink of the valley of slaughter. He dreams of being in Jerusalem, but alas! he is encamped very near the Dead Sea, and not far from Admah and Zeboim. And when “the Lord cometh in flaming fire, to take vengeance on all that know not God, nor obey the gospel,” how can he spare such an one! The Judge thus finding him only between the borders, must surely sweep him away, and assign him his portion with the unbelievers.
Come then at once before God, whoever you are that think yourselves in communion with the Jerusalem which is above, and breathe out to him from your inmost souls, ‘’Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting,” Psa. cxxxix. 23, 24. Be well assured, that in the last day, nothing will avail, except what the Holy Spirit has produced, borne witness to, and perfected in us. Every arbitrary device of our own, every mere human work, will then be burnt up as wood, hay, and stubble. All dependence on factitious spirituality, will-worship, and self-invented piety, all our own righteousness and imaginary sanctity, will be treated as a thing null and void, whose blossom will go up as dust. No other knowledge will then be inquired after, save what you have learnt by the teaching of the
Holy Spirit. It will not be asked in that day, hoiD much you have prayed or sung, but whether you have sung and prayed in spirit and in truth, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. It will not be inquired whether you have stood well in the esteem and connexion of believers upon earth, but whether you have really lived in communion with Him who is the true God, and eternal life; and have grown up into Him in all things, who is the Head, even Christ. Alas! how many are there in what is called the “Christian world “around us, who are conversant with all religious society, and nevertheless couch down only between the borders! having, for one reason or another, espoused the profession of godliness under the influence of their fellow-men, rather than of the renewing Spirit of God. May the Lord have mercy upon them, and open their eyes to see, that though they have free intercourse with real Christians, they are merely dazzled with their own good exterior! Where is the broken spirit, the contrite heart, the budding of regeneration, the new creature, the genuine thirst for inward purification by faith in Christ, the fervent, heart-praying desire to know Him in the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings, the conformity to His death? Where is all this, which, as the work of the Holy Spirit, can alone constitute the real Christian? It is wanting; and the wretched soul knoweth it not. May the God of all grace preserve us from such awful self-deceivings, the end of which is everlasting destruction! Let this consideration deter us from a perilous settlement between the borders; that” in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we may have our conversation in the world.” For “by the grace of God,” saith the apostle, ‘’ I am what I am;” and to the same effect is that utterance of the perfect and upright Job, “The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life,” Job xxxiii. 4.