Grace & Peace PGH

“Christmas highlights for us the failures and the futility of all our kings, all our heroes, and even our own lives; which would make for a sad holiday if it weren't about the coming of a greater King, a greater David, Jesus Christ the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings; everything David should have been and was not.” – Joshua Reitano

“The forward-looking character of faith lends solidness to the realm of Christian hope. Faith celebrates now the reality of future blessings which are certain because they are grounded in the promise of God. For the Christian it is the future, not the past, that molds the present.” – William L. Lane, Hebrews: A Call to Commitment, 158-159.

“Despite the vicissitudes of history, God is keeping his promise to provide a seed to destroy the serpent.” – Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis, 101.

“The final verses of the book tell us that the mark of those who have been immersed in the grace of God is compassion and love, not contempt, for people who aren’t like them. God challenges Jonah for confronting profane, ungodly people without weeping and compassion. Certainly error and evil must be denounced. However, God is both just and loving, and he rebukes Jonah for preaching to the city wit...

“A Jonah lurks in every Christian heart, whimpering his insidious message of smug prejudice, empty traditionalism, and exclusive solidarity. He that has ears to hear, let him hear and allow the saving love of God which has been outpoured in his own heart to remold his thinking and social orientation.” – Leslie C. Allen, The Books of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah, 234.

This is a sermon from guest preacher, Gavin Breeden.

Sunday's open discussion.

“Man must completely despair of himself in order to become fit for the grace of Christ. The proper preparation for the grace and goodness of Christ is the awareness that I need them.” – Martin Luther

“Jonah had come face-to-face with death, had experienced God’s grace toward an obstinate rebel, and had affirmed that ‘salvation comes from the LORD.’ Yet he still had the audacity to deny certain groups,… faced with the same reality of death, that same mercy. Thus chapter 2 plays a vital role in the author’s characterization of Jonah by showing, in the larger context of the book, just how inconsi...

“… if there is a God who cares about us, and who wants to reveal himself to us, and to use supernatural events as a pointer to his revelation (which is the most common purpose of these events in the Bible), it makes plenty of sense to suppose that he did so in such a way that there would be testimony, and there is no need to suppose that he would do it afresh in each generation.” – C. John Collins...

"God is love. This means more than ‘God is loving’ or that God sometimes loves. It means that he loves, not because he finds objects worthy of his love, but because it is his nature to love. His love for us depends not on what we are, but on what he is. He loves us because he is that kind of God, because he is love.” – Leon Morris, “1 John”, in New Bible Commentary, 1406.

“If we say ‘I believe in Jesus’ but it doesn’t affect the way we live, the answer is not that now we need to add hard work to our faith so much as that we haven’t truly understood or believed in Jesus at all.” – Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God, 124.

“…individualism is a cultural system with many advantages. Yet recent culture seems to have crossed the line from individualism to hyperindividualism. For example, the self-focsued phrases are not just individualistic – they’re also, well, wrong. ‘Just be yourself’ sounds like good advice at first, but what if you’re a jerk? What if you’re a serial killer? Maybe you should be someone else. ‘Believ...

“Time is what we want most, but... what we use worst.” – William Penn

“Money is like sea water. The more you drink, the thirstier you become.” – Roman Proverb

“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.” – John Bunyan

This is a sermon from the guest preacher, Gavin Breeden.

Today's open discussion.

This is a sermon from the guest preacher, Rodger Woodworth.

This is a sermon from the guest preacher, Rodger Woodworth.

“A Christian life in which we simply orient our lives around the teachings and example of Jesus with no real expectation of his bodily return to this earth is not the Christian life at all. The orientation of a Christian is leaning forward in anticipation of the next big event on the calendar of redemptive history: the second coming of Jesus Christ." – Nancy Guthrie, Blessed, 241.

“This picture of the new creation as a garden keeps us from expecting that this world is ever going to fully satisfy us. We’re thirsty for the living water. We’re hungry for the fruit of the tree of life. We long for the full and complete satisfaction that awaits us in the new and greater garden to come.” – Nancy Guthrie, Blessed, 237.

“…to be heavenly minded is to live in light of the age to come. To maintain a heavenly orientation is not to withdraw from the earthly creation but rather to view the earthly in light of the heavenly.” – Michael D. Williams, Far As the Curse is Found, 301.

“God is portrayed in Revelation, not as uncontrollably angry, but as inexorably just. God’s faithfulness to the creation, all humanity, and the church leads to the divine war against evil, Empire, and their lies, represented by the unholy trinity and named ‘Babylon.’ The three members of that unholy triumvirate together meet their final fate, along with those who ultimately refuse the mercy of God...

“Evil must be destroyed, not only for the sake of God’s justice, but for the sake of the purity of the new world.” – Vern S. Poythress, The Returning King, 175.