If you have come looking for a plain map through the preaching of George Whitefield, you are in the right place. Selected Sermons of George Whitefield gathers some sixty of his most enduring pulpit messages, and Ochorus hosts the full text free to read. The collection can feel vast at first — dozens of sermons, each built on a single verse — so this guide tells you what the book is, which sermons to open first, and the handful of themes that hold the whole thing together. The short answer is this: nearly every sermon here is preaching one thing from a hundred angles — that you must be born again, that your own righteousness will not save you, and that Christ is offered to you freely, today.
What the collection is, and how Whitefield preached
George Whitefield (1714–1770) was the great itinerant preacher of the eighteenth-century revival now called the Great Awakening. He crossed the Atlantic thirteen times, preached in open fields to crowds that ran into the tens of thousands, and became — with his friend and sometime rival John Wesley — one of the two voices that carried the evangelical revival through Britain and the American colonies. He had no microphone and no building large enough; he had a text, a burdened heart, and a voice that Benjamin Franklin famously tried to measure.
This is a collection, not a single argument, and that shapes how you should hold it. Each sermon takes one verse and turns it slowly in the light. Whitefield preached extempore, so what survives on the page is warm, direct, and unafraid to name the reader. He does not lecture about religion in the abstract; he presses it home. His grief was that so much churchgoing had never touched the heart:
there are a great many, who bear the name of Christ, that yet do not so much as know what real Christianity is.
George Whitefield
That sentence is the collection in miniature — an appeal, not merely an explanation. Because the sermons were preached across three decades and two continents, you can read them in any order. You will not lose a thread by starting in the middle. What you will find, again and again, is a man convinced that the new birth is not a doctrine to admire but an experience to seek.
Landmark sermons to start with
If the table of contents is daunting, begin with the sermons that made Whitefield’s reputation and still carry his heart most clearly.
The Method of Grace, preached on Jeremiah 6:14, is perhaps his most famous message. It dismantles the false comfort of a religion that has never faced its own sin. Whitefield warns his hearers plainly:
the greatest curse that God can possibly send upon a people in this world, is to give them over to blind, unregenerate, carnal, lukewarm, and unskilled guides.
George Whitefield
Read it first if you want to feel the force of his preaching. The Lord Our Righteousness, on Jeremiah 23:6, is his clearest statement of justification. Here he names the disease he preached against all his life — self-trust:
self-righteousness is the last idol that is rooted out of the heart
George Whitefield
On Regeneration and Marks of a True Conversion (Matthew 18:3) together form his teaching on the new birth: what it is, and how you may know it is real. And The Good Shepherd, his farewell sermon in London on John 10:28, shows the tender side of a man usually remembered for thunder.
From there, follow your need. Anxious about assurance? Read The Almost Christian on Acts 26:28. Weary and burdened? Turn to Christ the Only Rest for the Weary and Heavy-Laden on Matthew 11:28. Wanting the gospel whole and simple? Christ, the Believer’s Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification and Redemption gathers it into one text.
The central themes: the new birth, justification, Christ freely offered
Three great notes sound through the whole collection, and hearing them turns a pile of sermons into a single message.
The new birth, or regeneration. This is Whitefield’s signature theme, and he returns to it relentlessly. In On Regeneration he calls the new birth the very thing on which everything else hangs:
the very hinge on which the salvation of each of us turns
George Whitefield
He complains that people treat regeneration as a strange doctrine when it is the plainest thing in Scripture. His sorrow was that respectable, orthodox people could recite the creed and still never have been born again. In Marks of a True Conversion, on the Lord’s word in Matthew 18:3 that we must turn and become as little children, he sets out the tests by which a heart may know that God has done a real work in it.
Justification by faith alone. Whitefield was a convinced Calvinist, and his sermons on righteousness — The Lord Our Righteousness (Jeremiah 23:6), The Righteousness of Christ, an Everlasting Righteousness (Daniel 9:24), and Of Justification by Christ — hammer one point: you cannot dress yourself in a righteousness fit for God. It must be given. He preached that the last and hardest idol to give up is the quiet confidence that we can contribute something to our own salvation.
Christ freely offered. Against every form of self-help religion, Whitefield holds out Christ as a gift. Sermons like Christ the Only Rest for the Weary and Heavy-Laden (Matthew 11:28) and The Gospel Supper (Luke 14:22, with its insistence that there is still room at the table) are pure invitation. Even his sterner sermons — The Folly and Danger of Being Not Righteous Enough (Ecclesiastes 7:16) or The Eternity of Hell-Torments (Matthew 25:46) — are meant to drive the reader not to despair but to the open arms of Christ.
The range of the collection
Beyond the great gospel sermons, the book shows how widely Whitefield ranged. There are Old Testament portraits — Walking with God on Enoch (Genesis 5:24), Abraham’s Offering Up His Son Isaac (Genesis 22:12), and The Potter and the Clay (Jeremiah 18:1). There are Gospel scenes retold with drama — Blind Bartimeus (Mark 10:52), The Resurrection of Lazarus (John 11:43), The Conversion of Zaccheus (Luke 19:9), and The Pharisee and Publican (Luke 18:14).
There are practical, searching sermons for ordinary Christian life: The Great Duty of Family Religion (Joshua 24:15), The Duty of Searching the Scriptures (John 5:39), and even Directions How to Hear Sermons (Luke 8:18), which is a fine place for a reader of this very book to pause. And there are pointed warnings against particular sins — The Heinous Sin of Drunkenness (Ephesians 5:18) and The Heinous Sin of Profane Cursing and Swearing (Matthew 5:34). Whitefield believed the gospel touched everything, and this collection proves it.
Who should read it
This book rewards several kinds of reader. If you are new to the faith and want to understand what conversion actually is, the sermons on the new birth will give you the clearest, most personal account you are likely to find. If you are a long-time churchgoer who suspects your religion has gone cold, The Almost Christian and The Method of Grace were written for you — Whitefield’s whole ministry was aimed at the respectable person who had never truly come to Christ.
If you are a preacher or teacher, this is a master class in taking one verse and preaching Christ from it with heat and clarity. And if you simply love the history of revival, these are the primary documents of the Great Awakening — the actual words that moved a generation. Whitefield’s Calvinism is plain throughout, so a reader from any tradition will find both bracing conviction and much to weigh.
How to read it today
A few suggestions will make the collection far more fruitful. First, read one sermon at a time, slowly. These were spoken, not skimmed, and they land best when you give them a single sitting. Second, open your Bible to the text. Each sermon hangs on one verse; reading Matthew 6:13 or Philippians 3:10 first lets you see how Whitefield draws the whole message out of the words.
Third, let the older English work on you. Whitefield’s sentences are long and his address is direct — he often turns to speak to you without warning. Do not resist that; it is the point. When he presses a question home, answer it honestly rather than reading past it. Fourth, read for your soul, not only your notes. Whitefield would rather you close the book changed than informed. If a sermon such as Christ the Only Rest for the Weary and Heavy-Laden stirs you, stop and pray it in before moving on.
You may find it helpful to read alongside a contemporary. Wesley’s Sermons on Several Occasions gives you the other great voice of the same revival — and their friendship across real theological difference is itself worth pondering. For the same free-grace gospel in a shorter, gentler key, Charles Spurgeon’s All of Grace makes a warm companion volume.
For reflection
Whitefield never let a hearer leave without a question to carry home. Take these slowly, and answer them before God rather than on paper.
- Whitefield insists the new birth is the very hinge on which our salvation turns. Can you point to evidence of that work in your own heart, or have you, like Nicodemus, only ever heard the words?
- Reading The Lord Our Righteousness, where do you still quietly trust your own goodness? What would it cost you to give up that last idol?
- In The Almost Christian (Acts 26:28), Whitefield describes people who are near the kingdom yet not in it. What keeps an almost-Christian from becoming an altogether Christian?
- The gospel invitations here — Matthew 11:28 and Luke 14:22 — insist there is room for you. What holds you back from simply coming?
- After reading Directions How to Hear Sermons (Luke 8:18), how might you change the way you receive God’s Word — including the way you have just read this book?
Whitefield preached for a verdict, and this collection still asks for one. Begin wherever your need is greatest, read prayerfully, and let the great itinerant do again what he did in the fields: point you, plainly and warmly, to Christ. The whole of Selected Sermons of George Whitefield waits for you, free to read, at Ochorus.
