Grace & Peace PGH

“Christians should daily remember their baptism as a seal of the promises God has made to them.” – Rodger M. Crooks, Salvation’s Sign and Seal, 39.

This is a sermon from guest preacher, Derek Bates.

“A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it. People who go blithely through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person’s faith can collapse almost overnight if she has failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long consideration. “Believers should acknowledge and wrestle with doubts – not only their own but their friends’ and neighbors’… Only if you struggle long and hard with objections to your faith will you be able to provide grounds for your beliefs to skeptics, including yourself, that are plausible rather than ridiculous and offensive. And, just as important for our current situation, such a process will lead you, even after you come to a position of strong faith, to respect and understand those who doubt. “But even as believers should learn to look for reasons behind their faith, skeptics must learn to look for a type of faith hidden within their reasoning. All doubts, however skeptical and cynical they may seem, are really a set of alternate beliefs. You cannot doubt Belief A except from a position of faith in Belief B… Every doubt, therefore, is based on a leap of faith.” – Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism.

This is a sermon from guest preacher, Joseph Bianco.

“Mary was a mere Palestinian peasant girl, but God chose her as an agent through whom the divine promise would be fulfilled in the person of Jesus, the Son of God… She is blessed, not because she is pregnant, or because of any intrinsic holiness or merit but because God’s salvific purposes are being accomplished through her. Mary thus becomes one in a long line of recipients of God’s grace and mercy in salvation history.” – C.J. Martin, “Mary’s Song” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, 525-526.

“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 without loving the city.” – Timothy Keller, The Prodigal Prophet, 224.

“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 inconsistent his double standards really made him.” – Robert B. Chisholm, Jr., Interpreting the Minor Prophets, 126.

“… 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, The God of Miracles, 150.

"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. ‘Believe in yourself’ is fine, but ‘anything is possible’? No, it’s not. Expressing yourself, respecting yourself, and being honest with yourself are somewhat tautological but not usually directly harmful. But ‘you have to love yourself first’ has a crucial flaw: people who really love themselves are called narcissists, and they make horrible relationship partners.” – Jean M. Twenge, Generation Me, 65.

“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