Kingdom Growth: The Kingdom of God

Mark 4:26-34
Gregory Perry | Sunday, March 01, 2020
Copyright © 2020, Gregory Perry

We have been preaching through the book of Mark. This morning we are going to look at the growth of God’s kingdom from this section, Mark 4:26–34. There are only four parables of Jesus recorded in the whole gospel of Mark. A few weeks ago I preached about the first parable (in Mark 4:1–20), which is the parable of the sower, or the parable of the four soils. The section of Scripture we are looking at this morning contains the second and third parables of Jesus recorded in this gospel. The three parables all recorded in Mark 4 are kingdom parables. In other words, they are parables in which Jesus describes certain aspects of the nature and characteristics of the kingdom of God. So he begins with saying, “This is what the kingdom of God is like.”

The kingdom of God stands for the rule of God, the King, and the realm in which his rule is recognized. The kingdom has come in the coming of the King, the Lord Jesus Christ. And this kingdom is coming again when this risen King of kings returns in glory on the last day.

The parable of the sower focused on how the message of the King is received by the various types of people represented by the four soils. But these two parables indicate the mysterious and phenomenal growth of the kingdom that Christ has ushered in. Specifically, they tell how the kingdom of God expands through the spreading message of the King.

So we will look at these two parables of kingdom growth. We will look first at the parable of the growing seed, and then we will look at the parable of the mustard seed.

The Parable of the Growing Seed

Let us look at the parable of the growing seed. This parable is the only parable that is recorded only in Mark. Jesus explicitly declares it to be a parable that tells us what the kingdom of God is like. This is a kingdom parable with special application to evangelism.

This parable has three main ideas: first, planting the seed; then, the seed growing and maturing; and, finally, the reaping and harvesting of the crop. To put it more simply and memorably, you can think of it this way: sowing, growing, and mowing.

Sowing

In verse 26, we read, “A man scatters seed on the ground.” It is hard to deny the obvious connection here with the previous parable of the sower, which Jesus had spoken of earlier in this chapter. In that parable, Jesus tells us plainly that the seed the farmer is sowing is the seed of the word. There is no reason to think that the seed stands for anything different here. So the man scattering the seed here, again, is the man who speaks the word of God, the one who declares the gospel, who shares the message of faith.

The first thing this tells us is that we should be busy scattering the seed of the word. Or, as Paul puts it to Philemon, we should be active in sharing our faith (Philem. 6). This is our main purpose as believers in this world. As we heard last week, we must shine the light of Christ to this world of darkness.

It is good to ask once in a while, when we are saved, why is it that God keeps us here? Think about it. What can we do here that we cannot do in heaven? Most things that we can do here are much better in heaven, such as the worship of God and the fellowship with God’s people. It is all better in heaven.

What are the things that we cannot do in heaven that we can do here? There are only two things that are significant. One is that we can sin; you cannot sin in heaven. Two, we can evangelize. So ask yourself: Why is it that God has us here? Does he have us here so that we can sin, because we cannot sin later on? No, he has us here especially so that we will evangelize, so that we will be busy scattering the seed of the word and sharing this gospel of salvation.

We should look to scatter the seed of God’s word far and wide. As we saw in the parable of the sower, the seed falls on different soils, but the sower’s job is simply to sow. For without the gospel message of salvation being declared, no one can come to saving faith. In Romans 10, starting with verse 14, the apostle Paul asks, “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?” (Rom. 10:14–15).

We are sent to preach this word, to share this gospel of salvation. Salvation begins with God doing his miraculous work of regeneration. He makes alive with Christ those who are dead in their transgressions and sins. But God regularly does this divine work through the word being declared. So we see in James 1:18, “God chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.” In 1 Peter 1:23, Peter says, “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.” That is the seed that we sow.

We, as believers, as followers of Jesus Christ, are commissioned and equipped and sent to go and make disciples of all nations. We are to be fellow workers in this Lord’s great harvest field. As Jesus said in Matthew 9, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field” (Matt. 9:37–38). So we pray for workers and we pray for God to make us faithful workers in his harvest field.

Growing

Next is the growing. In verse 27 Jesus says, “Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.” This speaks of the mysterious, inscrutable way in which God himself works through the word planted. This is the Spirit’s invisible work of awakening in a human soul. The parable of the sower emphasized our human responsibility. The success of the seed depended on the soil in which it was planted. But this parable emphasizes our need for divine action. It highlights God’s sovereignty in salvation.

We cannot save ourselves. Salvation belongs to the Lord. We can do nothing. God does it all. No one is converted, no one repents and believes unless God first regenerates. We can preach the word with all the power and persuasiveness possible, and we are to do so. But we cannot manufacture a single true Christian. Synthetic conversions will, in time, prove to be false. True conversions are works of God alone.

This is especially made clear in Ephesians 2:1–10, where Paul sets forth the doctrine of total depravity. He says, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.” Being dead in your transgressions and sins means you cannot do anything to save yourself. Paul continues, “in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.” You see, we were slaves to our sinful nature. “Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.” This is not only total depravity, but it is also total inability. The dead man has no capacity to raise himself from the dead.

Then Paul begins in Ephesians 2:4, “But because of his great love for us.” You see, God did something. Paul continues, “God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” It is only by grace that we who are dead can be made alive. And in verses 8–9 Paul says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” And in verse 10 Paul says, “For we are God’s workmanship . . .” You see, we are not self-made men. We are God’s workmanship. We are God-made men. Paul continues, “created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

We are called to faithfully sow the seed by declaring the gospel and going on to speak the whole counsel of God. But God must do what only he can do, for only he can bring about spiritual growth. The apostle Paul put it this way in 1 Corinthians 3, beginning in verse 6: “I planted the seed,” meaning, he shared the gospel. “Apollos watered it,” meaning, he added teaching to it. “But God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow” (1 Cor. 3:6–7).

When God sent Moses to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go, Moses missed the whole point and he objected, “If the Israelites will not listen to me, why would Pharaoh listen to me, since I speak with faltering lips?” (Exod. 6:12). But whether the Israelites or Pharaoh are going to listen to Moses and his faltering lips does not depend on Moses. That is the point. It is God who will make them listen, for it is only God who gives the ears to hear what the Spirit speaks to the church.

Jesus says that if the farmer does not know how the plant sprouts from the planted seed, we need to have a healthy respect for the mystery of God’s inscrutable ways. In John 3:8 Jesus says, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

We should not pretend to know exactly how God does what he does, or who it is that he will work in, or who it is that he will work through. After all, God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are not our ways. The apostle Paul said, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” (Rom. 11:33).

Mark 5:28 gives us a picture of gradual growth. Jesus says, “All by itself, the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.” The statement that the soil produces grain by itself is not saying that the man who receives the word produces his own fruit. It is God who is doing the working. The point here is that it is not the farmer, it is not the one who sowed the seed. The farmer plants the seed and even waters it, but only God does and can do the necessary, radical internal work that we call regeneration, making us born again.

The growth is that of discernible, visible fruit. Regeneration is an invisible act of God, but it produces fruit that can be seen. This is why Jesus says in Matthew 12:33, “Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.” You can look and see what the fruit is, and it tells you the nature of the tree.

Notice that the growth is gradual: first, the stalk; then, the head; and, finally, the full kernel. This tells you also that the work of conversion is oftentimes gradual. Jesus spoke to his disciples that one of the first works of the Holy Spirit in conversion is, as he says in John 16:8, to “convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment.” After being convicted of sin, those God converts will then come to see Christ as the one and only solution to their sin problem. They will see that Jesus Christ is the only name given under heaven by which men must be saved. The final step is the full kernel. The convert repents of his sins and trusts in Jesus Christ alone for his salvation. He commits his whole life to Christ and proves his repentance by living a life of obedience to his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

So there is sowing and growing, and now we want to look at mowing.

Mowing

In verse 29 Jesus says, “As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.” Sometimes in the Bible the picture of the harvest is that of final judgment. But the context here suggests a different interpretation. Here the best interpretation is that the putting of the sickle to the grain is a picture of bringing new believers into the church. It is a harvest of people coming to saving faith in Jesus Christ.

This is the kind of harvest that Jesus frequently speaks of. We see it in John 4, starting in verse 35. In the context of evangelism, Jesus says, “Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying, ‘One sows and the another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor” (John 4:35–38). So here he talks about harvesting a crop for eternal life. That is what the harvesting is here in this parable.

Our job is to first sow the seed. Then God does the miraculous work of bringing to life. Then we are to gather into the church those whom God has chosen for salvation and brought to himself. Ministers of God’s word and those who share the gospel in evangelism should take heart from this parable. The time of reaping will come. In due time, our sowing will turn to reaping. As Paul says in Galatians 6:9, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest, if we do not give up.”

We are sometimes tempted to give up and be discouraged. We see people we share with who seem to be interested, seem to be close to confessing faith in Christ, or maybe even they make some sort of confession—but then we see them drift off and fall away. We are tempted to be discouraged. But remember that even the preaching of Jesus seemed fruitless much of the time. He was rejected by many. Even many who praised him and benefited from his miracles soon were calling out, “Crucify him!”

Yes, we are tempted to be discouraged, but we are assured that we will certainly reap a harvest. Christ will build his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail. That is a guarantee. Christ is building his church, and he will prevail.

In 1 Corinthians 15:58 the apostle Paul says, “Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is never in vain.” It may appear to our eyes at times that nothing is happening, but know that God is at work. Our labor is never in vain. The seed planted is at work. In the stillness and solitude of the night, when no one else is present, God can invade the thoughts of a person, as we see him doing with King Xerxes in Esther 6. In the middle of the night, God distracts him. He wakes him up; he cannot go back to sleep. You see, God can awaken that person that you spoke the gospel to, and awaken him to see his desperate need for Christ. Know that God’s word will not return void. His purposes either to save or to condemn will always be carried out.

In his commentary on this passage, the great Reformer John Calvin exhorts ministers of the word to take courage and not be disheartened. He says that when the fruit of their labor does not immediately appear, ministers are to continue to work the harvest field eagerly and faithfully, and trust that the Lord of the harvest will eventually produce the fruit for them to reap.[1] So we are to take courage and be patient. William Hendriksen, in his commentary, says this: “What a comfort this is, for now with patience we await the harvest that is certain to arrive. Victory is assured: God’s plan must be . . . carried out.”[2] So Jesus Christ, we said, builds his church, and the gates of hell will not and cannot prevail.

The Parable of the Mustard Seed

The parable of the mustard seed, which is recorded in all three synoptic gospels, is also a parable that deals with the theme of kingdom growth. Both Matthew and Luke pair this parable with the parable of yeast working through the whole batch of dough. While the parable of the spreading yeast stands for the internal growth of the individual Christian, the parable of the mustard seed speaks of the external growth of the overall church. The planted seed works within a believer, and the rule of the Lord Jesus Christ spreads to every aspect of a believer’s life. But God’s kingdom realm also expands visibly and outwardly, conquering territory upon territory, as God adds to his church even this day those who are being saved.

Mark couples this mustard seed parable with the parable of the growing seed that we just heard about. This parable, though, has a slightly different emphasis from the parable of the growing seed. Yes, both speak of the external growth of God’s kingdom. But the parable of the mustard seed emphasizes the kingdom growing from something seemingly so small into something truly immense.

This parable begins in verse 30: “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground.” Christ compares the kingdom of God to a miniscule mustard seed. The mustard seed was proverbial in first-century Israel for being so tiny. (GWP) Jesus even used this in Matthew 17:20 to talk about how tiny his disciples’ faith is. He said, “You have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move.’” So he used the mustard seed example often to speak about something very tiny and miniscule.

There is certainly a good deal of irony in comparing God’s great, infinite kingdom to something so infinitesimal. In verse 32 Jesus said, “Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.” Though the mustard seed was considered the smallest seed, it grows into the largest ground plant. The mustard plant grows to anywhere from ten to fifteen feet in height.

The emphasis here is on the vastness of the growth of God’s kingdom. Jesus here speaks to the expectation of God’s kingdom being spread far and wide as the gospel advances throughout the world. The fact that God’s salvation is going to be extended to the nations was made clear from the beginning, even when God made his original covenant with Abraham and his seed. In Genesis 12:2–3, God says to Abram, “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you.” So first of all, God is saying, “You, little Abram, will be made into a great nation.” But then he goes on: “I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” So not only will you be made into a great nation, but also through you all peoples on the earth will be blessed.

The vastness of the growth of the kingdom from humble beginnings is also prophesied about when Daniel interprets Nebuchadnezzar’s dream about a small rock that destroys a great statue. Daniel foretells what will happen with the rock that will destroy the kingdoms of this world. In Daniel 2:35 he says, “But the rock” – this little rock, which stands for Christ – “But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.” You see, this little rock becomes a huge mountain that fills the whole earth. It is the same idea of the mustard seed growing into a great plant.

This same phenomenal growth is spoken of by the prophet Ezekiel. In fact, by using some of these same phrases in the parable, Jesus seems to be alluding to these prophecies of Ezekiel. So in Ezekiel 17, starting with verse 22, he says this: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it; I will break off a tender sprig from its topmost shoots.” The sprig from the topmost shoots is like a tiny little mustard seed. “I will break off a tender sprig from its topmost shoots and plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it; it will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar.” Then we see the phrase that Jesus uses in his parable: “Birds of every kind will nest in it; they will find shelter in the shade of its branches” (Ezek. 17:22–23). And in Ezekiel 31:6 we read, “All the birds of the air nested in its boughs, all the beasts of the field gave birth under its branches; all the great nations lived in its shade.”

The disciples were commissioned by Christ to go and make disciples of all nations. And the book of Acts proceeds to tell the story of how the seed of the gospel spread from a few disciples in the city of Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and then to the ends of the earth.

We tend to forget how unlikely this gospel spread was. The band of Christ’s disciples was small in number. Jesus often spoke to great crowds, but most fell away when his teaching became hard. His loyal followers were few and far between. Jesus refers to them in Luke 12:32 as his little flock.

Not only were they few, but they were also feeble. They were not rich. They were not powerful. They were not influential. They were not noblemen or scholars. They were made up mostly of common fishermen and despised tax collectors. In 1 Corinthians 1, starting with verse 26, Paul reminds us: “Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him” (1 Cor. 1:26–29).

Jesus’ disciples were not even particularly courageous. The vast majority scattered when their shepherd was slaughtered. On the night of Christ’s arrest, Peter, Jesus’ closest follower and chief apostle, three times denied even knowing Christ, even doing so on oath. Or think of the improbable ministry of the apostle Paul. A single man, purportedly small and unimpressive in appearance, comes to a Roman city, whether to Psidian Antioch, Corinth, Philippi, or Ephesus. He comes with a simple message of a crucified Messiah who was raised from the dead. As Paul himself says, he did not come with eloquence and superior wisdom. Instead, he came in weakness and fear and with much trembling. And in his preaching, he resolved to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified (1 Cor. 2:1–3). Paul planted the seed of the word of God, and God made it grow.

Though many will reject the gospel and persecute the preacher of the gospel, all those God appointed for eternal life will believe. Through the ministry of one small man, Paul the apostle, the gospel spread throughout the whole Roman empire. When Jesus speaks of the birds of the air perching in the shade of the mustard plant’s large branches, he is likely making reference to this gospel being spread to the nations, not only beyond the borders of Israel, but even beyond the borders of the Roman empire.

The historical fulfillment of this prophetic parable of Jesus is quite remarkable. The faithful few who believed after Christ was raised from the dead—that faithful few grew to a thousand believers by the end of the first century AD. And then by 300 AD, so about 206 years later, even before the Roman empire was Christianized under Emperor Constantine, historians estimate that anywhere between five and eight million Christians were present throughout the Roman empire. Not to mention – this is just in the Roman empire – there are those beyond the Roman empire even by that time.

That growth requires an astonishing rate of about forty percent per decade. In other words, that tiny mustard seed grew into a giant mustard plant. Moreover, this tremendous growth was all in spite of the heavy persecutions that the Christians frequently faced in these three centuries. As the church father Tertullian famously said, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”

Church history tells us that all of the disciples, except the apostle John, were put to death for their faith. And Jesus said in John 12:24, “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” While Jesus was primarily referring to his own death, there is also a clear fulfillment of this principle in the history of his church. In fact, the Roman empire that sought to destroy the growing Christian “menace’ eventually itself succumbed to Christianity. After the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, the pagan Roman empire began to call itself Christian. Quite remarkable for a little mustard seed planted by a few uneducated fishermen in Jerusalem, a seemingly insignificant city in the backwaters of the vast Roman empire. The mighty Rome itself sought to shelter in the shade of the great Christian mustard plant.

From the time of Constantine to Charlemagne, which is about up to 800 AD, Christianity then spread throughout Western Europe, which came to be known as Christendom. And in the Middle Ages, the Christian faith spread to the Slavic countries as well as to countries like Norway and Greenland. Then after the Protestant Reformation, the pure gospel spread even further west, even to what is now known as the United States of America.

Then there was the missionary movement, which began in the late eighteenth century. William Carey, called the father of modern missions, spoke of the duty of Christians to attempt to spread the gospel among the heathen nations. And in this missionary movement, the gospel has been spread to many parts of Africa, Asia, and South America that had never received the gospel before. By 1900, the Bible had been translated into 300 languages, and by 1973, it had grown to 1400 languages. Today, at least portions of the Bible have been translated into over 3300 different languages.

As Simon Kistemaker says, “The tiny seed sown in Galilee at the dawn of the new age of Christianity has become a tree that provides shelter and rest to people everywhere.”[3] And we ourselves enjoy the shade of this shelter.

All of this is to say that this parable of the mustard seed is certainly being fulfilled, but it has not yet been wholly fulfilled. The tree is still growing and has not reached full maturity. There are still people who need to hear the gospel and to be brought into God’s kingdom. This gospel spread will not be fulfilled until the end of this church age which Jesus spoke about in Matthew 24, in his Olivet discourse. In verse 14 he says, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”

This gospel is still being preached, and God is still adding to his church those he has chosen to be saved. We can make application even to a local church. Think about the history of this church. We had small beginnings, like a mustard seed. We had a small-in-stature man who was called from India to come to this country. Some here may even remember starting meetings with maybe a dozen people in an apartment building. And over the years, God has added to this church, building it to what we are today. It is not just a church of saved souls gathered here to worship our God. No, this church has influence throughout the world, especially through our web ministry, book ministry, and ministry to churches that are being founded all over the world.

All of us are to be part of this plan that is being fulfilled. God saves his people and then he calls and equips us to go forth and spread God’s gracious message of salvation those in our various spheres of influence, beginning in our homes, as we heard last Sunday night. Begin by shining the light of Christ in your home, but then also with your more extended family, your friends, your neighbors, your classmates, and your co-workers. Spread the gospel. Be part of this work that God is doing to build up his church.

Application

Let me give you three brief points of application.

1. Do not take credit for God’s work. The parable of the growing seed especially reminds us that salvation belongs to the Lord. It is his work, not ours. He uses us to plant the seed, to share the gospel, but it is he who does the saving. It is while we are sleeping that God does the radical internal work to bring a dead sinner to life.

Some ministers love to crow about how many converts they produce at their revival or their crusade. But any convert that we produce will surely prove false. Synthetic conversions are false, temporal conversions. It is God who must do the mysterious work of regeneration. God must do the saving, and we must give him the credit for his great work. Heaven will not be a place of self-congratulation. Instead, it will be a time and place for divine adulation. Think of Revelation 7, starting in verse 9. It is a description of heaven. John says, “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb’” (Rev. 7:9–10). We must give him the glory due his holy name. To God alone be the glory.

2. We must be busy doing God’s work. The fact that salvation is God’s work alone is not a license for us to be lazy and do nothing. Some people excuse their inactivity in kingdom work by saying that if God is sovereign over salvation, then he does not need us to do anything. It is true that God will save those whom he will save, and it is even true that God does not need us. So we agree on that. But the Sovereign God has determined to use us, his people, to work out his great plan of salvation. In fact, knowing the sovereignty of God in salvation should actually be a spur for us to declare the gospel to all.

This point is accentuated in J. I. Packer’s small but important book, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. I recommend reading it to spur yourself on in evangelism. God’s sovereignty in salvation is an encouragement, an incentive, for us to evangelize. We can plant the seed with the confidence that it is the means that God has ordained to effectually call people to himself. So when you ask why you should share the faith, know that God has ordained his word to be used in saving his people.

It is true that God does not need us, but he has graciously determined to use us, his imperfect, fallible instruments. He is going to use us to accomplish his wonderful works of salvation. What a mighty privilege we have been given in this!

3. Finally, pray, pray, pray. Knowing the sovereignty of God in salvation is also a motivation to pray. If we cannot save, we know that he can. So we call out to the one to do what only he can do. We plant the seed and then we pray for God to bring about the growth. Dr. Packer says we need to work and pray. He says, “What, then, are we to say about the suggestion that a hearty faith in the absolute sovereignty of God is inimical to evangelism?” In other words, does it make our evangelism weak if we have too hearty a faith in God’s sovereignty? No. Packer asserts, “Not only does [divine sovereignty] undergird evangelism and uphold the evangelist, by creating a hope of success that could not otherwise be entertained; it also teaches us to bind together preaching and prayer; and as it makes us bold and confident before men, so it makes us humble and importunate before God.”[4] We humble ourselves before God, asking him to bless the work of our hands, which is for the extension of his kingdom.

Our praying, then, should spur us to even more evangelistic activity. We are to have patience, exercise faith, and keep on praying and working, knowing that God’s salvation program cannot fail. The good works that he begins he will be faithful to complete. The harvesting will follow the sowing in due time. And we have witnessed that ourselves. We ourselves are results of someone sowing seed that God brought into a work of salvation. So we are to go forth in the power of the Holy Spirit and sow the seed of the gospel everywhere, expecting by faith the truth that we plant to take root and expand and grow up. And it is all for the advancement of the gospel of grace, and it is all for the extension of Christ’s kingdom, for the glory of our triune God, for the glory of our blessed Redeemer. Soli Deo Gloria!

 

[1] John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists: Matthew, Mark, and Luke, vol. II (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003 reprint), 126.

[2] William Hendriksen, Exposition of the Gospel according to Mark, New Testament Commentary series (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 166.

[3] Simon Kistemaker, The Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980), 47.

[4] J. I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1961), 122.