Sermon Ideas: Series Through Books of the Bible

The simplest way to plan a year of sermons is to choose a few books of the Bible and preach through each one, a passage at a time. The congregation hears each passage in its place, the preacher always knows next week’s text, and the hard passages come up in their turn. Below are twelve series built that way, with the number of Sundays each one takes, and a list of topics for the Sundays between series.

Planning the year

A year has 52 Sundays. Take out Christmas and Easter, Sundays when a guest preaches, and the pastor’s vacation, and most churches have about 44 Sundays for series. Four series of eight to twelve Sundays fill most of that year.

Mix the series so the congregation hears the whole Bible over time. Follow a Gospel with a book of the Old Testament, and a long series with a short one. Set Advent and Easter first, because their dates are fixed, and fit the other series around them.

Twelve series

Plan a long series in parts. Mark divides at the end of chapter 8, where Peter says Jesus is the Christ, so it can run twelve Sundays in the fall and twelve in the spring.

Sermon topics and the passage for each

Each topic below is paired with a passage that teaches it, for a Sunday between series.

Dates for the coming year

Easter comes early in 2027, on March 28, so a six-week series that leads up to it starts on February 21. Mark 11 to 16, the last week of Jesus’ life, fits those six Sundays.

These dates move every year. Pick a year to see the dates that anchor your preaching calendar, and open the real tool to print the whole year with the seasons colored.

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See the church year dates

Pick a year and the dates that move each year appear. The real tool prints the whole year and gives you a file for your calendar.

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Year 2026 2027 2028

Church name

Cedar Hill Baptist Church · 2027

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The tool is free and opens with the year and church name you chose.

For Advent, our Advent readings for 2026 give a passage and a candle script for each Sunday.

The lectionary, if your church uses one

The Revised Common Lectionary is a three-year schedule of Bible readings that many churches follow on Sunday. The church year that begins on November 29, 2026 is Year B, and its first two Advent Gospel readings come from Mark. A church that follows it preaches from the readings it assigns each week, and Vanderbilt Divinity Library publishes them in full.

Preparing each sermon

Read the passage several times in the week before you study it, write down what you see before you read anyone else, and then read one older commentary on it. Matthew Henry’s commentary is free to read online at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Berean Blue is a free Bible study app from Church Posting that opens December 1, 2026, and it puts the passage, cross-references and older commentaries on one page. It also shows the Greek or Hebrew behind a word. Tap a word to see it.

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Tap a word, see the Greek

Berean Blue shows the Greek or Hebrew behind a word in the English text. Tap a word in John 3:16.

John 3:16 · Berean Standard Bible

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Tap loved, world, believes or life.

ἠγάπησεν

egapēsen

From agapaō, to love. The verb is past tense and shows the love as an act that was carried out.

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