Sunday, September 30, 2012

I still Believe in Jesus but … who is His Mother? 私は、それでもなおイエスを信ずる...そして誰が彼の母親ですか?


   Well, last week, we took some time to explore this Lordship of Jesus Question.  It might not have been a question you had. It might have been a reminder of simple truths you hold on to.  It may not have been helpful at all—for a series of reasons. None-the-less, I HAVE to preach that part of the Message.  As with Paul, as he wrote in Romans 1:16 ローマ1:16 “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for Salvation to everyone who believes… For in the Gospel a righteous from God is revealed…”
   As we have stated before, The Gospel Message is FOR the Christian AND the Non-Christian alike.  We who know this Message and follow it need to be reminded “more often than we need to be instructed.” And for those who do not believe the message, they too need to hear it because it is life giving AND because the message is true.

   先週:宿題。 Last week, I had asked you to look up those verses that we printed in the handout.  I asked you to write down some thoughts.  Who would want to be the second one to share what they found?   
1 Cor 10:31; Matt 5:16; Luke 10:38-42; Mark 6:31; Isaiah 55:6-7  1コリント10:31 ; マタイ516; ルカ10:38-42 ; マルコ631; イザヤ55:6-7

   Isaiah 55:6-7 6 Seek the Lord while He may be found; call on Him while He is near. 7 Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts.  Let them turn to the Lord, and He will have mercy on them, and to our God, for He will freely pardon.
   Before we move from this point, is there anyone here this morning that wants to call on God for your Salvation?  Is there anyone who wants this pardon that is offered by the Saving God? 

   From a commentary I have been reading, the author suggest that this passage from Isaiah uses both repentance FROM sin and COMING TO Christ for pardon.  Last week we spoke of this: “A person moves FROM sin and TURNS to Christ.” 人は罪からイエスへ向きなおす。
call on Him彼を呼び求めなさい  Let the wicked forsake their ways邪悪なものは自らの道を進ませましょう。  the unrighteous their thoughts.  Let them turn to the Lord. 彼らが向き直すようにしましょう。  To better understand this, turn to Paul’s writing in Acts 20:21: I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.”
   Still later, in Hebrews 6:1, ヘブル人への手紙61 we find: Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God…”
   The phrases today: And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord. who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, 我は天地の造り主、全能の父なる神を信ず。我はその独り子、我らの主、イエス・キリストを信ず。主は聖霊によりてやどり、処女マリヤより生まれ
   If we were to summarize the Biblical teaching about the Person of Christ, it would look like this: Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man in one person, and will be for forever. 
   In saying that, Biblical proof is very strong to support this definition.  Let’s get to it:

   As we found last week, Luke as well as Matthew accounts are most important to the foundation of this claim in the Apostle’s Creed.  The birth of Jesus is found there.  The Promise of that Birth, however is found in many Old Testament passages as in Isaiah 7:14 Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a Son, and will call Him Immanuel.  
    The Virgin Birth: 処女懐胎:  Huge item here!  I am sure there are other so-called- faiths that have something like this but this is very important to hold to as a matter of Faith.  The Scriptures undoubtedly asserts that Jesus was conceived in the womb of His mother Mary by a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit and without a human father. 
   Matt 1:18 マタイ118        This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.
   Matt 1:20 マタイ1:20  But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”
   Matt 1:24-25 マタイ124-25: 24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave Him the name Jesus.
   This is asserted in Luke’s Gospel, as well, where we read of the angel Gabriel coming to Mary with this news.  Luke 1:35.  The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.”

   This is the birth of Hope. 希望の誕生. In a world that is constantly changing, with wars, sickness, poverty and injustice, there are people who struggle to keep on living, living by habit long after they had lost any sense of purpose or drive, significance, ambition or goal.  And into this world God had made preparations. 

   Things had not gone the way Creator God wished them to go.  In Isa 5:7b イザヤ57b that when He looked for justice, He saw bloodshed, looked for righteousness but heard cries of distress instead.  And He looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress. Yes, things with His own Children, the Nation of Israel, they had turned against His laws and commands.  They had killed the Prophets and cheated one another, lied, and used each other for ill.  The more life fell under the control of sin, the emptier life seemed, and the more frustrated His People became (Isa 59) イザヤ59.  But His Plan for them was for good.  Even with the Peace of Rome, there were heavy taxes, armies occupied their cities, Roman culture and values, slavery and misery were every day experiences.  There were still wars and poverty BUT as the people struggled to live their lives, something very unique was about to happen in this out of the way province of Rome.  A Birth of a Baby took place and only shepherds noticed and some wise men from the East.  And this Baby would be able to do something no law could.  One day, THIS Baby would say “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”  (John 10:10 、ヨハネ10:10.)
   To a world of people who live from one day to the next with no real hope, without real meaning to life—this Birth—this Baby Jesus, the Christ, would offer a fresh newness to a dull life.  A life worth living.  A life turned around and transformed by the Power of God and the world will never be the same again.

   The Virgin Birth and the doctrinal importance of that birth is seen in at least three areas: 処女懐胎とその出生の教義上の重要性は、少なくとも3つの分野で見られます。

1. This shows that Salvation eventually must come from the Lord, Himself. 救いは神から来る必要があります The Lord promised that the “seed” of the woman (Gen 3:15) 創世記3:15would in the end bring the end of the serpent, Satan.  God brought this about by His Own Power and not through mere human effort, strength or struggle.
   Our Salvation can never come through Human effort, but MUST be the Work of God Himself.  This proves to be the case as Paul writes in Gal 4:4-5 4:4-5  But when the set time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to Son-ship.

2. The Virgin Birth made possible the uniting of FULL Deity and FULL Humanity in one Person. 神と人との統合を可能とする This was the means God used to send His Only Son to earth as a Man.  (John 3:16, Gal 4:4)  If we would try to think up a better way for this to happen, it would come far short of the glory this produces.  I would guess God ‘could have’ made Jesus a human being in Heaven and sent Him down an escalator to the earth but that would not have helped us see Him as fully Man as we are.  That type of creation would not have come down the human line from Adam. 
   On the other hand, if God ‘could have’ made Jesus come from a man and woman union, with His fully divine nature miraculously united to his human nature later in his life, that might be possible.  But that would bring the problem of seeing Him fully God as His origin was like ours in every way.  Could we become divine later on in life as well?  No.  Some teach that but not teachings from the Bible.
   We can see some of why God did this in the way He did.  This way helps us understand how God, in His complete wisdom, ordained or designed a combination of human and Godly effect in the birth of Christ.  We can see that impact would be greater to see that the Virgin Birth—with the influence and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit could work this to become reality with Mary.

The Virgin Birth and the doctrinal importance of that birth is seen:
3. There is the problem of inherited sin; the Original Sin原罪の問題 of Adam. The Virgin Birth makes possible Christ’s TRUE humanity without inheriting the Sin of Adam.  It would not be connected to Adam race.  All of human kind has indeed inherited legal guilt and a corrupt moral nature from our first father, Adam.  The fact that Jesus did not have a human father means that the direct line of decent from Adam is somewhat interrupted.  Jesus’ ancestral connection to Adam would be different.  This moral and legal issue does not belong to Christ.
   Look at Luke 1:35 ルカ1:35  The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.”
   Just because the Holy Spirit brought about the conception of Jesus in the womb of Mary, this child can be called “holy.”  In this case, the unbroken line of descent from Adam was interrupted and that Jesus was conceived by the Power of the Holy Spirit.  Without a direct connect with the line of Adam, that breaks the line, was the method God, the Father, used to bring it about that Jesus was fully human YET did not share the inherited sin that Adam carried.
   Here is where it gets tricky.  Some groups teach that Mary herself was free from sin, but the Scripture nowhere teaches that.  How far back will it need to go so that this guilt and corrupt moral nature would not be there? (On December 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX proclaimed, 1854128日に9世は宣言した…“The Most Holy Virgin Mary was, in the first moment of her conception … in view of the merits of Jesus Christ … preserved free from ALL stain of original sin.”  (Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, trans. Patrick Lynch (Rockford: Tan, 1960), p 190). They also teach that Mary was free from every personal sin during her whole life”, p. 203).
   To respond to that, we must confirm that this belief is not supported from Scripture.  “All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God.”  Mary was indeed “Blessed…among women” (Lk 1:42) but nowhere does the Bible specify that Mary was free from inherited sin.  Just not there. そこにだけではない
   As we look at how the Christian Faith has been attacked over the years, it should not catch us by surprise that those who deny the complete truthfulness of Scripture would also deny the doctrine of the Virgin Birth.  It is not possible, they would say.  If our beliefs were to be directed by the statements of the Scripture, than we would truthfully not deny this teaching.

   To say we believe this because it is in the Apostle’s Creed is not the proof of it correctiveness.  The Scriptures affirms the teaching of the Virgin Birth.  As we learn more about this Creator God, such a miracle is not out of line from what He is capable of doing.  Anyone who affirms that the Virgin Birth is just impossible is, in fact, confessing his or her unbelief in the God of the Bible.  And as we learn more of the doctrines of the Faith, we would be true to His Character to believe and affirm this doctrine as well. この教義を肯定する必要があります。