Dear Church Family,

Please pray for our students as they gather for DNOW in a couple of weeks. Pray for Pastor Paul Pakebusch and his leaders as they guide them. Thank you for your investment in this next generation! The following is another nugget of wisdom from Chad Bird:

Suppose you came across this odd sentence: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but serving your country in freedom, be the change you wish to see in the world, fearing nothing but fear itself as you live by the rule: Give me liberty or give me death.”

Here we have a mixture of partial quotes from John F. Kennedy, Gandhi, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Patrick Henry. Yes, it is far from seamless, but I put it forward as an example of what someone might do who wove together bits and pieces from several sources.

We see a mixture of partial quotes from various sources in the Transfiguration account as well, part of which is from one of the chapters we read today in Bible in One Year (Isaiah 42).

The Father says of Jesus, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (Matt. 17:5).

This is a divine intermingling of phrases from:

• Ps. 2:7 (“my Son”)
• Gen. 22:2 (“beloved son”)
• Isa. 42:1 (“in whom my soul delights”)
• Deut. 18:15 (“to him you shall listen”).

Later rabbis would call this joining together of different parts of Scripture, “stringing pearls.” In one short sentence, God strings together pearls from four other verses.

These pearls are lifted from the Torah and prophets and Psalms, then strung together to show how Jesus is the Son of God, Servant of the Lord, and Prophet.

The pearl-stringing that the Evangelists engage in is hardly a New Testament innovation. Matthew and the others learned it by modeling Isaiah, Jeremiah, and David, who learned it from their literary predecessors, who were all schooled by Moses.

So, as you study the Scriptures, watch for pearls. Note how the human authors together with the divine Author have written the Scriptures in such a way that, from Genesis to Revelation, there is a deep interconnectedness that all leads us to the culmination of the salvation story in Christ.

Press On!

Mark