Have you ever had your life changed by one sermon? Each week Christians sit in church and listen to teaching from God’s word, hoping to glean an idea that will forever alter the course of their path. While each sermon is edifying in its own way, we often resonate with certain themes or speakers. In addition to attending church on Sunday, one of the best ways to find quality teaching you can enjoy is by looking online for great Christian sermons. This allows you to hear Biblical principles from a number of educated, Godly men who may have different points of view or areas of expertise. Let’s talk about a few ways to find great Christian sermons online.
How nice would it be if, instead of having to track down sermons one at a time, you could build a playlist of sermons that you can visit throughout the week? Podcasts are the media phenomenon of our time as everyone from John Piper to NPR has developed some kind of programming. We recently covered a list of prominent podcasts for sermons and teaching, but there are many other kinds of shows out there. Even within the Christian arena you can find programs on pop culture, church leadership, writing, and more.
What’s nice about podcasts is that they give you access to sermons through different mediums. If you want to listen on your computer, that’s simple enough. However, you can also download the episode or sermon to your smartphone or MP3 player. Through these different options you can listen to great Christian sermons during your commute, at the gym, or during your lunch break at work.
Unlike radio broadcasts, these podcasts allow you to pick the sermons which you want to enjoy. If you’re going through a certain situation like a health scare or a child going into high school, you can easily find a sermon that touches on the emotions and fears that play into those scenarios. It’s always nice when you happen upon powerful preaching through the radio dial, but podcasts allow you to listen to pastors you respect teaching on topics that are close to your heart on demand. Why wouldn’t you want to get in on that?
Not too long ago, there were really only two ways to enjoy old sermons from the day’s best-known preachers. The first was to physically go to the church and rent or request a physical copy. The second was to stumble upon the pastor’s radio program and hope it’s the sermon you’re looking for that day. Technology has made this process much simpler.
As the Christian community progresses to a more tech-friendly place, we are seeing a rise in the way that media is being embraced. Filming testimonies and streaming services online are just two of the most popular ways that technology is changing how we do church. Religious establishments are also finding better ways to catalog sermons from today as well as the past. While every church is different, many of today’s well-known churches have a YouTube channel or a place on their own websites for you to view sermons from weeks or months ago.
If there is a pastor you greatly admire but live far away from, this is a good way to take in their teaching. Likewise you can check on the church you had to move away from for work to see how things are getting along back home. This is an especially good tool for parents whose kids are going to school hours away because you can see what is being poured into them and maybe even ask their thoughts on a certain lesson.
Aside from podcasts and official church websites, you might be looking for great Christian sermons using other sources online. There are actually a few places you can go. One of the more obvious answers is to get on YouTube as we mentioned earlier. Most famous preachers and churches have some kind of account on this website. When you finish one video, you’ll receive recommendations on others that you may enjoy. If you’re really looking for sermons from one specific teacher, you may find a playlist that will cycle through some of that person’s most popular video entries. This isn’t the best system for finding specific sermons, but it’s a good start.
Although we can’t control which sermons are shared on the radio each day, there is a way to find these broadcasts online. At One Place you can find radio programs from all around the country to which you can listen. This site groups together current and past sermons and programs from organizations like Focus on the Family and pastors like Greg Laurie and John MacArthur. Depending on the radio program, this catalog might be a week’s worth of broadcasts or it could go back months. After listening to each entry, you might decide to subscribe to the podcast or simply download the sermon for later listening. This website is easy to navigate for options like these.
Another good option to turn to is Sermon Audio. This site boasts well over a million sermons in its archive and it allows you to search by speaker, topic, and more. The variety may not be quite as diverse as One Place or podcast aggregators like iTunes, but it’s a great place to find sermons.
Looking at the embarrassment of riches that we have today with Christian media, it’s strange to look back only a few decades ago and realize that communities in America went centuries where the only exposure to Christian teaching was the local pastor and traveling speakers. Today you can find great Christian sermons from across the country and even the globe by simply typing into a search bar.
When listening to any preacher or speaker, we should compare what is being said with what the Bible teaches. With so many teachers of the Word out there, it can be hard to keep track of what is opinion and what is straight from the Bible. It is easier for us to judge the teaching of our own church’s pastor as we can see his heart each week and understand where he is coming from, but when we take in the teaching of someone 1,000+ miles away things are different. If you’re going to regularly listen to preachers from different walks of life, just be sure to also stay up to date on your Bible reading.
Lastly, this new age of technology gives us a lot of freedom when it comes to streaming church services and receiving Biblical teaching without ever stepping foot in a church. We cannot forgo our responsibility to the local church by being active members who contribute socially, financially, and in leadership and service. We all loving hearing great Christian sermons, but the Church is about so much more than our listening preferences.
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