Isaiah 28:23-29 — Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech. Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the clods of his ground? When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rye in their place? For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him. For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod. Bread corn is bruised; because he will not ever be threshing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen. This also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.

I don’t know that I have anything to say about this passage that hadn’t been said before. It’s just that I’ve never heard anybody preach on it, and when we read it yesterday it just jumped out at me. So I thought I’d just look at it and write down what I saw.
The first thing I saw is that the farmer doesn’t spend all his time doing just the same thing — “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;”
(Ecclesiastes 3:1)
The second thing is that the farmer isn’t wasteful in the way he uses resources. Each crop is sowed in the best place for it.
The next thing I saw was that the farmer uses different methods for different jobs, or for the same job with different crops.
Next I saw that the farmer learnt this wisdom from God. It’s no surprise that God teaches. In Exodus 31 for instance, we find “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah: and I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship” (Exodus 31:1-3)
From all of this I find that if I am open to it, God will give me the knowledge I need for any task he has for me to do. He’ll tell me what do do, when to do it, and how.
There’s another thing, though. I think that when God told Isaiah about how He instructs the farmer, He’s teaching us about how he deals with us too. He will deal with each of us differently, according to our different natures and needs. He will deal with us differently at different seasons of our life. He won’t ever waste us either. We are His precious seeds. If we produce fruits, he’s going to feed, water and tend us according to our own special needs.
What a wonderfully reassuring passage!