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5：16; ルカ10:38-42
; マルコ6：31; 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6：1
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.
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1：18 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1：24-25:
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5：7b
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3:15、would 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, 1854年12月8日に、ピウス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。
