God's Sovereignty, the Gospel, and Sleeping Well

Excerpt of a message on Mark 4 given by John MacArthur at Together For The Gospel 2010.

So here we are, a year before the Great Commission and the Lord gives us really a whole chapter here on evangelistic instruction. It’s foundational, I think, to our understanding of biblical evangelism. It’s comprehensive. It’s detailed. It is critical for us to understand what’s in this chapter. I want to begin by having you look at verses 26 to 29 and it is from this portion of the chapter that I have drawn the title. Our Lord gives a series of parables here, this one only in Mark as the others appear in Matthew and Luke, this one only in Mark. Verse 26, “He was saying, ‘The Kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day and the seed sprouts and grows, how he himself does not know.’”

The soil produces crops by itself. First the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head, but when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle because the harvest has come. Our Lord spoke about the Kingdom of God, and by that He meant the sphere of salvation over which He reigns, the domain of His Lordship over believers. What is it like? It’s like seed that sprouts and grows and the farmer does not know how it happens. And he’s the expert, by the way. He’s the agricultural expert. The wonder of the gospel is this, you sow the gospel and you go to sleep and it grows. We have no control over that. We don’t know how that happens anymore than the farmer knows how that seed which is dead, or dormant in the ground, produces abundant life. The most erudite botanist and biologist and agriculturalist cannot explain the forces of life.

The only human act, our Lord is saying, is to sow and go to sleep, while the crop mysteriously grows. All the work of forces completely separated from the farmer, even the best farmer. This is the language of the Apostle Paul, some sow, some water, and God does...what?...gives the increase. This is also bound up in those very familiar words in the gospel of John, “To as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become sons of God, even to those who believe on His name who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” Spiritual, birth, spiritual life, seed that grows is a divine miracle.

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