"Rather than break faith with God, Daniel was willing to risk expulsion from the Royal Academy with the disgrace and danger that entailed. His priorities were firm." —Gleason L. Archer, Jr.

Grace & Peace PGH

The Model Exiles

"For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life." —The Epistle to Diognetus

The Counterintuitive Exile

"You must choose, but choose wisely... He chose... poorly." —Grail Knight, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Exilic Choices

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” —Genesis 12:1-3

The Father of Exiles

"By virtue of faith in Christ, home is in heaven, and Christians, therefore, are just passing through this world as foreigners." —Karen H. Jobes

The Double Exile

"If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world." —C.S. Lewis

The Beginning of Exile

"In the first 'garden 'Not your will but mine' changed Paradise to desert and brought man from Eden to Gethsemane. Now 'Not my will but yours' brings anguish to the man who prays it but transforms the desert into the kingdom and brings man from Gethsemane to the gates of glory." —D.A. Carson

The Passion

"Not everyone is called to pour out expensive ointment over Jesus' head; but if someone is, the rest should respect it. The grumbles of the bystanders... sound a lot like the embarrassed rationalizations of people who have their own emotions well covered up and don't like seeing other people's on display..." —N.T. Wright

Betrayal, Denial, and Anointing

The Greatest Commandment

"Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it

I Boast No More

"In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon who was called the Zealot, and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. And he came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all."

July 4, 2021

"Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are."

Open Discussion: June 27, 2021

Religious Fig Trees

"We have to see the tough challenges of 'self-denial' and 'carrying one's cross' not as goals in themselves but as means to the goal

Insufferable Servants and the Long-Suffering Savior

"Christ is not valued at all unless He is valued above all."

Through the Needle's Eye

Weekly sermons from Grace & Peace PCA in Pittsburgh, PA.