「主なる神がつないだ系図」 十二月第一主日礼拝 宣教 2025年12月7日
マタイによる福音書 Matthew 1章1〜17節 牧師 河野信一郎
Good morning. We greet this first Sunday morning of December in the Lord’s grace. We thank the Lord for the blessing of joining together with you all this morning to offer praise and worship to God in response to His invitation. There are 18 days left until Christmas, and only 24 days remaining in 2025. We are thankful that this year too, as Okubo Church, we have been able to continue moving forward together in the Lord’s abundant mercy. There are certainly times when it feels like one step forward, one step back. Yet, as our annual motto declares, let us continue walking as a church that responds vibrantly to the Lord’s grace. Walking in this way is God’s will.
This year marks the 60th Christmas since Okubo Church was founded. Attending this morning’s service are Mr. and Mrs. K, who have faithfully served and supported Okubo Church for 56 long years. The 60th Anniversary Thanksgiving Service in July was a joy-filled gathering, and this morning’s worship offered together with the K couple is likewise a time of supreme joy and grace. We give thanks to God for bestowing such blessings upon us. Though their residence is now farther away, let us continue praying that the couple may live healthily, accompanied and protected by the Lord.
Now, since the 30th of last month, we have been spending Advent, preparing our hearts to joyfully celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. We are also observing the World Baptist Prayer Week, remembering and praying for world missions until today. But how long will we continue to observe Advent and this World Prayer Week? It will continue until Jesus Christ returns to this earth as King, as He promised His apostles, and reigns completely over all things. We call Jesus’ birth the “First Coming” and His return the “Second Coming.” I believe the way to spend Advent and the World Prayer Week is to reaffirm that our mission as individuals and as the church, entrusted to us by the Lord, is to accurately understand the “reason” for Jesus’ birth and to continue testifying to His redemptive death on the cross and His resurrection until He comes again to this earth.
This morning, we read Psalm 130:7-8 as our invitation to worship. The psalmist encourages those who trust in the Lord God, declaring, “Wait for the Lord. For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. He will redeem all who take refuge in him, for he knows the number of the days that we have in store, that he may show us mercy.” Here, God’s sure promise is recorded. This promise was kept and fulfilled through God’s Son, Jesus Christ. By the precious blood of redemption shed on the cross erected on Calvary’s hill and by the death in which He gave His life, the full price for our sins was paid. Through this Savior, we receive God’s mercy again this morning.
This salvation is a grace equally given by God to all people through Jesus Christ. It has nothing to do with the era in which one lived, race, gender, age, social status, or circumstances whatsoever. All people are beings created by God and kept alive in God’s love. Every person is an object of God’s love. No one is excluded from that love. Yet some live selfishly without fearing God, rejecting the loving hand of salvation He extends. Nevertheless, we must not be discouraged by this. This year too, we are entrusted with the task of proclaiming to people that the Savior has been born, inviting them to “come and see for yourselves” at our Christmas worship service.
Now then, This morning, I hope we can listen together to the “Genealogy of Jesus Christ” recorded at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew. It shows that the blessings promised by the Lord God to Abraham were preserved by God without interruption throughout the long history, that God Himself connected them. But first, I want to begin by answering a simple question: Why did Matthew, who recorded this Gospel, place Jesus’ genealogy at the very beginning of his Gospel?
First, verse 1 states, “The genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” This Gospel of Matthew was written for the Jewish people, descendants of Abraham, to read. Its purpose was to prove and proclaim that Jesus is the legitimate descendant inheriting the bloodline of his forefather Abraham and the great King David of Israel, and that He is the long-awaited Messiah, the Savior. It was written not only to demonstrate God’s faithfulness in working within Israel’s history and protecting His people, but also to show that there was a reason and purpose behind preserving and connecting them in this way.
To put it simply, it records God’s love and faithfulness—that the Lord God is always near, protecting and guiding Israel no matter what state they are in. What we understand through this genealogy is that God’s love and promise of salvation for Israel spans history.
Reading verse 17, it states, “Thus, the total number of generations from Abraham to David is fourteen; from David to the Babylonian exile, fourteen; and from the exile to Christ, fourteen.” The number fourteen is a multiple of seven, the number of perfection. This signifies that God’s love for Israel and for us is perfect love, and that God’s promise of salvation is perfectly fulfilled. In other words, the genealogy is the history of salvation for Israel and all people, lovingly planned by God. History has both good times and bad times.
The fourteen generations from Abraham to David lived through an “era of growth and prosperity.” This was because they feared God and obeyed His word. The fourteen generations from David to the Babylonian exile were an “era of decline.” This was because they forgot their covenant with God, rebelled against His word, and turned to idol worship. The fourteen generations from the Babylonian exile until liberation by Christ constitute the “Dark Age.” God’s judgment led them into captivity by Assyria and Babylon. Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed. Even after liberation from captivity, the heavy responsibility of rebuilding Jerusalem, the Temple, and the city walls weighed heavily upon them.
However, in such a dark age, God gave us Jesus Christ—the Savior, the Word of God, and the Light of the World. God sought to fulfill the blessed promise made to Abraham with love and mercy. Herein lies God’s true love for us. How should we respond to this true love? Just as Jesus gave us His heart and His life on the cross, it is vital—and surely His will—that we also offer our hearts to the Lord and dedicate our lives to His service.
Though we are small and weak, should we not live faithfully toward God and sincerely toward our neighbors, so that God may walk with us in truth? So that we may live this way, Jesus always walks with us, loves us, prays for us, and speaks to us.
This genealogy of Jesus lists five women. In the male-dominated Jewish society, this was unthinkable—an extraordinary exception. Yet the Lord God does not fulfill His promises of blessing using only men. To hold fast to a humanity nearly severed from God and His blessings by the weakness and sinfulness of men, God uses women who were made small.
The woman named Tamar who appears in verse 3 had relations with her father-in-law Judah and bore his child. Judah failed to fulfill his responsibility as her father-in-law. Rahab, who appears in verse 5, was a prostitute, but the men who forced her into such a life bear responsibility. She became the mother of Boaz through Salmon. The woman who married this Boaz was Ruth. Though she was a Moabite, the people most despised by the Jews, Boaz married this woman who had suffered such unjust treatment, making her the mother of Obed. From this Obed came Jesse, the father of King David.
In verse 6, it states, “Jesse fathered King David. David fathered Solomon by Uriah’s wife.” King David, consumed by sexual desire, abused his royal power to seize Uriah’s wife and force her to bear Solomon. Her name was Bathsheba. From this point, Israel’s history plunged from an era of prosperity into one of decline, entering a dark age.
Thus, the genealogy beginning with Abraham records the history of sins repeatedly committed by men against God, yet it also documents how God used women to connect that history. It records that God never forgot the women oppressed and diminished in the darkness of a male-centered society, women who shed tears, and that He used them for His purposes. God uses women to keep His promise of blessing, to protect Israel, and to connect the lineage of Jesus.
To fulfill the promise of salvation, God chose a woman named Mary to send the Savior into the world. Verse 18 states that Mary “conceived by the Holy Spirit” before she was married to Joseph. The Savior needed to be born not through a sinful man, but through the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary. We humans might think it impossible for a woman who has never known a man to conceive, but nothing is impossible for God.
God accomplishes the impossible because He loves us. His purpose is to save those who believe in Jesus as Savior and make them His children. We are truly people who live in sin, suffering and writhing in its darkness. We were living far from God, living toward death. Yet God had compassion on us, gave us a Savior, and calls us to salvation, into the light. Therein lies God’s true love.