John MacArthur · Sermons by Scripture

John MacArthur's Sermons by Scripture

MacArthur's defining project was preaching every verse of the New Testament, in order, from one pulpit, which means the honest way to find his sermon on a passage is to search by Bible book and verse, not by title.

If you are looking for "John MacArthur's sermons by scripture," you are asking the question his own ministry was built to answer. From 1969 until 2011, MacArthur preached verse by verse through the entire New Testament at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California: a project that took forty-two years and produced an archive organized less like a typical sermon library and more like a spoken commentary indexed to the biblical text itself.

This page explains how that indexing actually works, what MacArthur's expository method looked like in practice, and where to search his archive by passage: Grace to You, the ministry that has stewarded his sermons since 1969, publishes essentially the whole catalog free, with a full written transcript for nearly every message.

What John MacArthur Actually Taught

MacArthur's signature method was expository preaching taken to an unusually literal extreme: rather than choosing topics or moving quickly through a book, he worked through entire books of the New Testament verse by verse, sometimes spending months on a single chapter. He completed the entire New Testament in 2011, finishing with the Gospel of Mark: a milestone reached by almost no preacher in modern church history, documented on Grace to You's own site and covered widely at the time.

That method reflects a settled conviction MacArthur stated often in his teaching and writing: that the preacher's job is to explain what a passage actually means in its own context, verse by verse, rather than to use a text as a launching point for an unrelated topic. His sermon titles and outlines consistently track the passage itself: a MacArthur sermon on Ephesians 2 is titled and structured around Ephesians 2, not around a theme borrowed from elsewhere in Scripture.

Because Grace to You publishes a transcript alongside nearly every sermon, MacArthur's archive is unusual in how directly it can be searched by passage rather than by guessing at a sermon title. If you know the verse you're studying, gty.org's own search by Scripture reference is the most reliable way to find exactly what MacArthur said about it.

A closer look at Sermons by Scripture

"Expository preaching" is the term for MacArthur's method: a sermon whose main points and structure come directly from the structure of the passage itself, rather than from a topic chosen independently of the text. Its opposite is topical preaching, which starts from a subject and draws supporting verses from across the Bible.

Working through the entire New Testament in order, verse by verse, means MacArthur's sermon archive functions as a nearly complete commentary, for almost any New Testament passage, there is very likely a MacArthur sermon that addresses it directly, in its immediate context, rather than in passing.

The scale of the project is part of what makes it notable: forty-two consecutive years without switching to a different long-form method, at one church, under one pastor. Few modern preaching archives offer that combination of completeness (a specific book and verse), consistency of method (expository throughout), and free public access (Grace to You's transcript-and-audio model).

Frequently asked questions

Did John MacArthur preach through the whole Bible?

He preached verse by verse through the entire New Testament, completing the project in 2011 after 42 years, finishing with the Gospel of Mark. He also preached substantial series through Old Testament books, though the New Testament coverage is complete in a way few other preachers have matched.

How long did MacArthur take to preach through the NT?

Forty-two years, from the start of his ministry at Grace Community Church in 1969 to completing the final verses of Mark in 2011.

Are MacArthur sermon transcripts free?

Yes. Grace to You publishes a full written transcript alongside essentially every sermon at gty.org, free to read, search, and download, in addition to audio and video.

What is expository preaching?

Expository preaching draws its structure and main points directly from a passage of Scripture, working through the text's own logic and content rather than starting from a topic chosen independently of it. MacArthur's verse-by-verse method through entire books of the New Testament is one of the clearest modern examples of the approach.

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