Understanding the Sacraments | Lesson 1
Incarnation and Sacraments
Have you ever considered just how much you are dependent on electricity? Let’s take that device you have in your pocket every day of the year...
So, think about your phone for a moment. Electricity is necessary because it charges the battery. And then the small micro-circuits calculate 1,000s of time each second as it takes data and transforms it into a wireless signal to reach another person somewhere else in the world. What an amazing piece of technology!
But think also for a minute, what happens when your battery runs out of all its power and your phone turns off? What do we call it - when that happens… we say, “my phone is _______ ”......
Dead. Isn’t it interesting that we metaphorically say that a device with a drained battery is dead. In a lot of ways, this is a great illustration of what happened in the garden of Eden. Adam and Eve we’re perfectly “charged” up always because God was with them. But when they disobeyed, they disconnected from the power source, and while they didn’t die right away, the battery started to drain.
From that moment on, every human being born into the world is born with a limited battery because we are born disconnected from God. That means we will experience death.
Now, the most interesting thing happened in God''s plan.
God became man so that he could begin the restoring process … so that we may be restored back to life. This has both spiritual and physical aspects.
We need to remember that the incarnation of Jesus is the most astounding thing to have ever happened in the history of the world. Jesus became man so that man could come back to God. This is how Jesus brought the power source back to man. Now, his atoning death is what makes it possible for us to come back to God, but we must not forget that his incarnation is what makes the atonement possible.
But keep in mind this illustration: like how your phone is restored by connecting it to an electrical power source, Jesus reconnects us to God- both in the here and now, and in the ultimate sense when we are resurrected.
So, the question is, has God provided us with ways to experience this reconnection so that we might be strengthened, encouraged, healed, sanctified, and blessed while we await that ultimate reconciliation- that day of resurrection?
The answer is, of course, yes- and we call these Sacred Moments of Grace, Ordinary Means of Grace... or Sacrament.
You see, God cares about the Ordinary, Flesh and Blood life that we live. In fact, he brought great honor to human beings in-the-flesh through the incarnation of his only begotten son. This is important to understand because the sacraments I'm going to discuss in this teaching series demonstrates that God "incarnates" his grace through very ordinary things. That is lesson 1.