Embrace Creatureliness
I want to introduce a new word to you: Creatureliness. I didn’t think this was a real word until I typed it into Google and found an entry for it in the online dictionary.
Here’s what I mean by Creatureliness: The aspects of our lives that are given to us because we are created by God. These could be specific things about us: height or natural intellect. But just as much they are things that we aren’t. We aren’t omnipotent, we aren’t perfect, and we don’t decide, and can’t change, most of the things about ourselves.
My exhortation to us this morning is to Embrace Our Creatureliness.
Listen to 2 Corinthians 4:7
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
All of us are made by God and are part of his creation. We are creatures who have our limits, functions, and purposes defined not by ourselves, but by our creator. We are not our own creator and, therefore, do not define our own limits, function, or purpose.
Do you remember in last week’s sermon how Blake mentioned that the modern equivalent to a jar of clay may be a plastic bag? Plastic bags are useful and serve a purpose. But they are utterly replaceable, easily damaged, and limited in their capacity. Our bodies getting older and wasting away are a part of our creatureliness. As we age, we get tired more quickly, we can’t eat what we want anymore, we can’t run as far. These limitations irk us, none of us like to think of ourselves as limited.
But we are part of the creation, we are not the Creator. We have limits, God does not. When God made humans, he didn’t give us unlimited age or strength, he gave each of us limits. These limits are not bad and they represent our creatureliness. Even youth who feel invincible cannot ignore their own of creatureliness. I promise that your mom and dad used to be a lot more fun and adventurous than they are today. You may not feel your limits in the same way they do, but you also have limits.
So, church family, what do you do when you run up against your limits? Or, do you get frustrated at the very idea that you have limits?
Look back at our verse again- We have this treasure in jars of clay, “to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” Our creatureliness has a purpose. It displays both to us and to the world that we are not God. None of us want our weakness. All of us would rather have the beauty of Instagram, or the charm of the salesman, or the mind of the engineer, or the ambition of the entrepreneur. All of us can point to some way that we, if we were God, would improve ourselves. But we aren’t God and that is good news.
According to this verse, the best thing I can do when I run up against my own creatureliness, is to embrace it, not rebel against it. And when I do this, I put God’s power on display. I’m not beautiful, charming, brilliant, or ambitious but God loves me anyway! Left to myself, I’m shockingly self-centered. But because of Christ’s sanctification in my life, I love to serve others. I’m just a simple jar of clay, but the King of the Universe finds pleasure in using me! Not because I’m awesome, but because my weakness displays his strength.
When you find yourself dissatisfied with something about yourself, your first answer should not be to muster up the inner strength to fix it. You are first and foremost a creature, not a creator. God has placed you in a body and a set of life circumstances and then called you to be faithful to him through those. But he is using you to display himself to a watching world. Embrace your creatureliness and bring glory to God in your weakness.
If we are honest, this is often not our first response to our own weakness. We grumble and complain because God did not make us this way or that. Rather than leaning into our creatureliness and striving for faithfulness we rebel against it and spend our days striving to change ourselves and our circumstances.
Because of this, we need God’s forgiveness. I’m going to lead us in a prayer of confession and I encourage each of you here to take a minute and confess to God ways that you have sinned this week. We do this each week because, as creatures, we need regular reminders of who we are: Sinners in need of grace. Let’s go to the Lord in confession.