What is the advantage of purchasing the MacArthur Sermon Archive from Logos? All of these sermon manuscripts are available for free on the Grace to You website.
The search capabilities. Tagging and linkages. Resources in Logos format have these features.
The same is true with John Piper sermons. It has been a blessing to have them in Logos, however, especially with the new Sermons section in the Passage Guide.
If you want to find the relevant sermons quickly, and then easily manipulate the data in them within your Logos workflow (e.g. clippings, notes, highlights), then buying them from Logos makes your work so much more efficient.
I would say having the sermons in Logos are helpful for those reasons and the ability to read them offline.
However, since I have his commentaries and lifeworks already, I won't be buying them. I also think that they are priced high for a sermon collection.
I have all of the MacArthur commentaries that were made available before Moody pulled them. But this sermon archive has a lot of material that was not included in the commentaries, including all of his topical sermons (which are a relatively small portion of his total).
So I think it is a great resource, even at this price of $200, about 6 cents a sermon. But if you don't have the commentaries, this is as good as it may get, if Moody and Logos can't work out their issues.
Apart from the general advantages of content in our format like our powerful search engine, the basic tagging every resource gets, its integration into an interconnected digital library, our multi-platform apps and syncing, our notes and highlights, etc., we do some special things to sermons to make them even more valuable.
This (slightly outdated) video will help you understand some of the value we're adding to these sermons. We're working on a video that focuses on MacArthur's sermons.
In short, we label sermons by preacher, title, passage, topic, date, etc. That allows you to find sermons on a particular passage of Scripture or on a particular topic right in your guides.
Here are results for a passage:
Here are results for a topic:
You can also run advanced searches in your sermon resources using the label searching syntax. Here are some searches to try:
This markup combines with the advanced search and guide section features to make this content far more valuable than free access to it elsewhere. As far as I know, there's no other way to search sermons with this kind of precision.
And we've been in discussion about adding even more markup in the future. For example, we could label sermons by part—something like this:
This would allow you to narrow your searches even further and find illustrations or applications on a topic or passage.
Phil,
1. please include John MacArthur's sermon audio to his sermons please.
2. those syntax search are too complicated for most users, I bet 90% of Logos' users never even search like that. You guys need to simplify the searches. What if I want to search John MacArthur's Christmas sermon in 1983? or so..
please include John MacArthur's sermon audio to his sermons please.
We tried. We couldn't get rights. As often as we can get rights, we'll add audio and video.
those syntax search are too complicated for most users, I bet 90% of Logos' users never even search like that. You guys need to simplify the searches.
I understand. The guide sections make searching sermons simple. If you want more power and precision, you need to learn the syntax. It's not as complicated as it might seem at first. We've discussed a guided search query builder tool that might bridge the gap and make it easier to construct these kinds of searches.
What if I want to search John MacArthur's Christmas sermon in 1983? or so..
Run a search for {Label Sermon WHERE Creator ~ MacArthur AND Date ~ <Date Dec 25 1983>}.
Search within the sermon with something like incarnation WITHIN {Label Sermon WHERE Creator ~ MacArthur AND Date ~ <Date Dec 25 1983>}.
In short, we label sermons by preacher, title, passage, topic, date, etc. That allows you to find sermons on a particular passage of Scripture or on a particular topic right in your guides. Here are results for a topic:
Hi Phil,
I had a question. In the above example you mention that sermons are labeled by Topic and then there is an example of searching by topic in the Sermon Starter Guide. I personally don't use the Sermon Starter Guide too often, but I use the Topic Guide quite frequently. Is there a way to get the option to add a "Sermon Section" to the customized Topic Guide the way that it is in the Passage Guide and the Sermon Starter Guide? I've never really understood why it was left out?
Thanks Phil.
Hi Phil, I had a question. In the above example you mention that sermons are labeled by Topic and then there is an example of searching by topic in the Sermon Starter Guide. I personally don't use the Sermon Starter Guide too often, but I use the Topic Guide quite frequently. Is there a way to get the option to add a "Sermon Section" to the customized Topic Guide the way that it is in the Passage Guide and the Sermon Starter Guide? I've never really understood why it was left out?
I'm not entirely sure why it's not there. I'll check to see if we can add it.
Thomas Manton's sermons don't show up in these searches
also H.A Ironside sermons don't seem to populate
Not all sermons have been tagged yet. We're working through existing sermon resources to label them.
