Read This First

Welcome to my website! Here at your fingertips are more than 1500 of the sermons I preached during my 44-year ministry for Christ.

Two Types of Sermons

The vast majority of my sermons are expository sermons. These are my verse-by-verse and passage-by-passage teachings through a book of the Bible or a section of the Bible. For example, I preached more than 70 sermons through the gospel of Mark, more than 70 sermons through the gospel of John, and more than 50 sermons through the book of Romans.

You’ll also find some topical sermons here. These sermons focus on a topic such as faith, salvation, sharing the gospel, the person of the Holy Spirit, or countless other things. In a sense, these topical messages are still expository sermons, because they expose the Bible’s message about that topic. But technically, because these sermons quote verses from a handful of passages throughout the Bible and don’t focus on one specific passage, we can call these topical sermons.

Two Formats of Sermons

Most of my messages are full manuscript sermons. In these sermons you’re reading every single word I preached to my congregation when I presented that particular sermon. These sermons are in the neighborhood of 3500 words. They are usually double-spaced and 12 manuscript pages long. They take about 30-35 minutes to present. Many, but not all of these sermons, include about 10 follow-up questions for individual study, Bible study groups, or Sunday school classes. I wrote those follow-up questions for the home Bible study groups that were active in the church I was serving. They would hear my sermon on Sunday and then discuss its passage and themes in their small group that would meet later that week.

The other format you’ll find is what I call partial manuscript sermons. In these messages, you’ll notice that some words are in both bold print and underlined. Here are some examples:

Faith

Prayer, intercessory

Salvation, beg “Don’t assume.”

Heart

Jesus, deity of

These bold-print and underlined words refer to the titles of index cards in my sermon illustration file. I have thousands of these index cards, each one given a title or a Bible passage at the top. Under that title on each card there would be written a personal story out of my life, a quotation from a book or magazine, a poem I heard or found, etc. Unfortunately, you won’t know “the stories” behind these bold-print and underlined words. These words will be lost on you as you read my manuscripts. Sorry about that.

Notice in my third example above that after the word “Salvation” there is another word “beg” followed by the words “Don’t assume.” That first word “beg” is short for “beginning.” And then the additional words “Don’t assume” are the first (or beginning) words on that card that has the heading “Salvation.” I might have dozens of cards with the heading “Salvation,” so to make it easy for me to find the one I’m looking for, Salvation, beg “Don’t assume” would be a note to myself that I’m looking in my index-card file for an index card with the heading, “Salvation” and its first words would be, “Don’t assume…” That was a note to myself concerning where in my index-card file I would find this sermon illustration.

You’ll see that word “beg” hundreds of times on this website after a bold-print and underlined word or words, and that’s what it refers to. It’s simply short for “beginning…”

You’ll also see words just in bold print and not underlined. These are words I wanted my PowerPoint operator to make into PowerPoint slides for the worshipers to see on our screen. All of my main points and sub-points are in bold print. So are many Bible verses I quote. As I spoke these words, my people saw them on the PowerPoint screen behind me.

Other Works Besides My Sermons

On the “More” tab, you’ll find some of my works that are not sermons—books and articles I’ve written, helps for pastors, etc.

Everything Is Free

Everything on my website is free for the taking. You don’t have to log on or pay for anything.

Pastor Tom Carter