Fans of John Piper will probably be aware of the Biblical Preaching website that hosts his weekly sermons in MP3 format. He has been preaching a series on Romans that started back in 1998 and is still going (over 160 sermons later). In fact he seems to be stuck in Romans 12 at the moment. Anyway, the good news is that they have also been adding older sermons to the site and now the archive goes back as far as the first sermon on Romans.

Not many preachers could get away with preaching for so long on just one book, although Piper is a lightweight compared to Lloyd-Jones’ 368 or so sermons on Romans (and he didn’t even finish the book).

I am reminded of Spurgeon’s comments on preachers who embark on series of sermons in his classic book “Lectures to My Students”:

“I have a very lively, or rather a deadly, recollection of a certain series of discourses on the Hebrews, which made a deep impression on my mind of the most undesirable kind. I wished frequently that the Hebrews had kept the epistle to themselves, for it sadly bored one poor Gentile lad. By the time the seventh or eighth discourse had been delivered, only the very good people could stand it; these, of course, declared that they never heard more valuable expositions, but to those of a more carnal judgment it appeared that each sermon increased in dullness. Paul, in that epistle, exhorts us to suffer the word of exhortation, and we did so. Are all courses of sermons like this? Perhaps not, and yet I fear the exceptions are few, for it is even said of that wonderful expositor, Joseph Caryl, that he commenced his famous lectures upon Job with eight hundred hearers, and closed the book with only eight! A prophetical preacher enlarged so much upon ‘the little horn’ of Daniel, that one Sabbath morning he had but seven hearers remaining.”