Cited in sermons
John MacArthur
74 sermons · All people cited
The Works of the Flesh
Galatians 5:19–21 presents Paul's catalog of the works of the flesh as a concrete definition of what it means to fail to walk in the Spirit — the very Spirit given to those justified by faith alone. This exposition works through four categories of fleshly sin: sexual immorality, religious apostasy, disorders in personal relationships, and intemperance, drawing on the Westminster Larger Catechism to illuminate each category's depth and breadth. The critical distinction the sermon presses is between remaining corruption (the struggle every believer knows) and reigning corruption (the habitual, unrepentant practice that marks the unconverted). The sermon closes by directing hearers to the active obedience and atoning death of Christ as the only ground of hope in the face of this condemning list.
The Dangers of Pragmatism
Pragmatism as a worldview — the conviction that 'what works' replaces 'what is true' — poses a constant threat to faithful Christian living and ministry. This sermon expounds Deuteronomy 31–34, tracing Moses' fatal act of pragmatic disobedience at the waters of Meribah (Numbers 20) and its severe but merciful consequence: exclusion from Canaan. Drawing on 1 Corinthians 3, the sermon argues that believers' post-conversion works will be judged by fire, and that Moses' death on Nebo — attended by God himself — is the Old Testament portrait of a servant who suffered loss yet was never abandoned by the covenant Lord. The abiding application is this: obey God's commanded means, not merely his commanded ends, and rest in the assurance that nothing can separate the justified sinner from the love of God in Christ.
The Call of Isaiah the Prophet
Isaiah 6 confronts the prophet — and the reader — with the enthroned holiness of God, the wretchedness of human sin, and the costly nature of prophetic calling. This exposition traces three movements in the chapter: the throne-room vision that undoes Isaiah, the divine atonement that restores him, and the mission God assigns — a mission of judicial hardening rather than revival. The sermon draws out five recurring themes that govern the entire book of Isaiah and closes with a call to faithful proclamation regardless of visible fruit, grounded in the sovereignty of God over judgment and restoration.
From Persecutor to Preacher
Paul's autobiography in Galatians 1:11–24 is not self-promotion but a defense of the divine origin of his gospel and apostolic authority. Working through Paul's former conduct as a practitioner, persecutor, and professor of Judaism, the sermon argues that no man so deeply invested in Judaism would have invented or received the gospel of free and sovereign grace from merely human sources — it came by direct revelation of Jesus Christ on the Damascus road. The conversion of Saul of Tarsus is thus a monument to sovereign, particular grace: God saved His chief enemy and commissioned him to preach the very gospel he had tried to destroy. The sermon calls the unconverted to see in Paul's transformation the sufficiency and willingness of Christ to save the most wretched sinners, and summons believers to tenacious defense of justification by faith alone.
A Little Sinner and a Big Savior
Luke 19:1–10 presents the conversion of Zacchaeus as a concentrated display of sovereign, covenant-keeping grace. The sermon works through Zacchaeus's identity as a chief tax collector, a rich man, and above all a lost sinner, before turning to the mission of Christ: he condescends, calls by name, and saves by grace alone through faith alone, with repentance and good works following as inevitable fruit. The closing application presses both the unconverted to make haste to Christ and the converted to receive him joyfully as they come to the Lord's Supper.
The Christ-Centered Orientation of the New Man
Colossians 3:15–17 presents the new man not as a moralist who earns standing before God by putting off vice and putting on virtue, but as one whose entire life is oriented around the person and work of Christ. The sermon argues that three Christ-centered realities define the new man: the peace of Christ, which is grounded in justification by faith alone and flows from the blood of Calvary; the word of Christ, which is to dwell richly in the heart both for personal transformation and mutual edification in the body; and the name of Christ, under which every word and deed is performed. The practical summons is to let the gospel — not personal performance — be the governing principle of the Christian life, so that the new man is known above all for making much of Christ crucified.
Amazing Love
What does it mean that God has 'bestowed' his love on believers, calling them children of God? Expounding 1 John 3:1, this sermon traces the love of God across three horizons — before the foundation of the world in eternal election, in redemptive history at the cross, and throughout eternity to come — while pressing the permanence of that love against any notion that it can be forfeited. The sermon closes by drawing from Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3 to show that the believer's calling is not to measure the intensity of his own love for Christ, but to be spiritually strengthened, educated, and saturated in the inexhaustible love Christ has for his people.
The Redemptive Act of God
Colossians 2:13–15 sets out four distinct facets of God's one redemptive act accomplished through Christ: regeneration of the spiritually dead, forgiveness of all trespasses, cancellation of the debt of law-breaking, and disarming of demonic principalities and powers at the cross. The totality of this divine work leaves no room for human supplement — not asceticism, not mysticism, not legalism — because God in Christ has secured the salvation of his elect entirely and irrevocably. The sermon presses believers toward grounding their daily assurance not in personal performance but in these objective acts of God recorded in Scripture.
Christ's Circumcision
Colossians 2:11–12 is frequently marshalled by paedobaptists to argue that baptism has replaced circumcision as the covenant sign and therefore ought to be administered to infants, but the passage cannot bear that weight. This sermon works through three preliminary observations — the structure of covenant theology, the relationship between circumcision and baptism, and the actual point of the passage — before exegeting verses 11–12 directly. The circumcision Paul describes is spiritual regeneration performed by Christ without hands, and baptism is its retrospective public sign, not a parallel to the prospective sign of physical circumcision given to Abraham's infant sons. The sermon closes with a sharp warning against any gospel that supplements Christ's finished work, insisting that justification is an alien, forensic righteousness imputed to the believer by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
The Best Defense
Colossians 2:8–10 issues a double-edged call: beware of the spiritual kidnapping of godless philosophy, and rest in the sufficiency of Christ in whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily. The sermon exposes the 'Christ plus' logic underlying ancient and modern heresy — circumcision, asceticism, angel-veneration, and their contemporary equivalents — as substitutes for what believers already possess completely in Christ. The best defense against false teaching is not vigilance alone but a thoroughly biblical Christology, grounded in the conviction that those who are in Christ are complete in the head of all principality and power.
The Letter to Laodicea
Revelation 3:14–22 contains the most severe of the seven letters to the churches of Asia Minor: Laodicea receives no commendation, only a devastating indictment of lukewarmness, self-sufficiency, and spiritual blindness. Christ identifies himself as the Amen, the faithful and true witness, and the inaugurator of the new creation — credentials that expose the Laodiceans' faithlessness, their inaccurate self-assessment, and their complacency born of material prosperity. The threat of being vomited from Christ's mouth is not a final verdict but a conditional warning, issued in love, calling the church to zealous repentance and renewed communion with Christ. The sermon applies five Laodicean sins — pride, self-sufficiency, spiritual ignorance, misplaced trust in material wealth, and worldly compromise — as a mirror for any church prone to confuse outward comfort with genuine spiritual health.
A Biblical View of Homosexuality
Scripture condemns homosexuality not as a cultural accident or genetic condition but as a transgression of God's creational order, a sin judged in Sodom, legislated against in the Old Covenant, and confirmed in the New Testament. This sermon works through four biblical categories — creation, Sodom and Gomorrah, Mosaic legislation, and New Covenant confirmation — to establish that homosexuality is a moral offense against the triune God, not merely a violation of Jewish or sectarian code. The consistent refrain of Scripture is that this sin, like all sins catalogued in 1 Corinthians 6, is answered by a real Savior who washes, sanctifies, and justifies sinners — making a properly biblical view of homosexuality the only view that can offer genuine hope to those in bondage to it.
The Incarnation and Our Salvation
Galatians 4:4–7 sets before the reader three privileges secured for sinners through the incarnation of the Son of God: redemption from the curse of the law, adoption into the family of God, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who enables the cry 'Abba, Father.' The sermon argues that the incarnation was no divine afterthought but the execution of an eternal covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son, initiated entirely by divine grace and not by any human merit or seeking. The triune God acts in perfect unity — the Father sending the Son to secure the rights of sonship, and the Father sending the Spirit to give the power of using them. Hearers are called to meditate on these three blessings, to grow in knowledge of the triune God, and to resist discouragement by taking an active hold of these gospel truths.
Perfecting Holiness in the Fear of God
Paul's charge in 2 Corinthians 6:14–7:1 to 'perfect holiness in the fear of God' rests on three covenant promises: the nearness of God, the favor of God, and the fatherhood of God. Because God has already fulfilled these promises in Christ, the imperatives to cleanse from all filthiness of flesh and spirit and to press on toward complete sanctification follow as the fitting response of those already redeemed, not as conditions for receiving grace. The sermon traces the biblical-theological root of these promises from Exodus and Leviticus through Jeremiah and Ezekiel to their fulfillment in Christ, and applies the call to corporate ecclesial fidelity and to individual decisions — especially the prohibition of marriage to unbelievers — governed by the fear of God rather than emotion.