"It Ain't Pretty" | Sunday AM | Pastor David K. Caruthers

Psalm 34, verse 18 The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart and save such as be of a contrite spirit.

Psalms 34:18

And today I want to speak to you a few minutes what I've entitled, It Ain't Pretty.

Look at your neighbor and say it ain't pretty.

Come on, some of you English majors that have a hard time saying that.

Look at your neighbor and say it ain't pretty.

Lord, we thank you for your blessings, your grace, your goodness.

Thank you for this time together today.

We pray that you will speak to our hearts, minister to our lives as we open our hearts to you.

Let your work be done in this place and in our lives.

We give you glory and honor and praise in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

You may be seated.

We're so glad you're here and uh so glad to have uh Brother Henry, Sister Sally here.

They're our longest, longest work of Calvary.

They have a great group that they're hosting in their homes for service.

Had somebody baptized.

Was that last week?

Last week, had somebody baptized out of their group.

That's all ex that's exciting.

And uh we're gonna claim to be part of that since they're part of Calvary.

We we live in a world that uh is obsessed with appearances, you know.

Even even if you're like me, it's like every once in a while I see a photograph online somewhere, a picture of someone that I knew or I thought I knew.

And then I see their photograph and think, man, I'm getting old.

You know, a few um a couple of months ago, I actually was uh preaching at a Spanish event, and uh and when they put out the publication for it, uh somebody had helped my picture a lot.

I said, that's not even me.

I don't I don't that's like maybe me uh 20 years ago.

Maybe, you know, maybe.

So it's like we're but we we we uh we're sort of fixated on appearances, and so uh we we care really, although sometimes we say we don't, but we really do care.

We want everything sort of polished and impressive and uh attractive, and uh we have that kind of mindset a lot of times.

And and so we want to put our best foot forward, which is good, but we also kind of uh a lot of appearances of things, and and all of you have seen uh advertisements or seen uh photos of something and you got there, and it's like it's not anything like that.

It's it's not their their marketing is better than their reality, of course.

And uh so and so we have that kind of mindset sometimes, and uh, and sometimes we take that over into our relationship with God.

In the Bible, uh, an altar is a place where we meet God.

It's a place where we meet God, and God never designed that altar to be pretty.

God knew that our natural tendency as human beings would be to make the altar something attractive to us, something appealing to us.

But that's not God's design.

God's design is for the altar not to be pretty.

The altar's not a place of decoration, it's not a it's not a place to wow at.

And I I realize that sometimes in our in our uh approach of things we can see that.

I've we've traveled around.

One of the things that we do when we travel is we go into churches.

Um, and a lot of times the churches are really uh that we go into when we travel, especially overseas.

A lot of times the churches are are are sort of monuments of what was.

Not really what they are today.

And uh so uh it's kind of interesting, you know.

You go in, you look at the architecture, you look at the beauty, you look at the stained glass, you look at all the things, the decorations they have, and uh see all the floors.

I mean, it's from it's top to bottom, sometimes just beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

But that's not the point of a church.

That's not the point of a place of worship.

It's not to look at how beautiful the building is, it's not to look at how beautiful the place is, it's not to look how beautiful the altar is.

The altar is a place of death, it's a place of sacrifice, it's a place where sinful people can encounter the living God.

And uh so when when altars get elaborate, we notice the art, and sometimes if we're not careful, we forget the purpose.

The power of the altar is not found in the beauty of the altar, it's found in the fact that we meet God there.

We meet God there.

And so I can say today that the altar, it ain't pretty.

It ain't pretty to look at.

In fact, God in the Old Testament forbids us to beautify the altar.

The Bible is filled with altars.

They're simply a raised place where people could offer sacrifice, where people could meet God, where people could talk to God.

And we see people repeatedly building altars in the Bible.

They're building them for different moments, different times that they're meeting with God, different times they're offering sacrifice to God.

Sometimes they're sort of permanent or semi-permanent, and sometimes they're temporary for the moment.

They're building these altars, they're worshiping God before the altars, and even up to the place of the tabernacle.

Remember in the tabernacle, there's the sort of organized and structured, and there's beauty and built into the tabernacle.

I do want to note that the outside of the tabernacle was not beautiful.

It was very plain and quite ugly, in fact.

But the inside, inside, had some beautiful things in it.

But even while the altar was there in the tabernacle, and even while the altar was there in the temple, people were still building altars outside of that.

They were building their own altar where they're talking to God, where they're speaking to God, where they're meeting with God, where they're offering themselves to God.

So even after that, altars were being built.

They served as that meeting place.

And so the Bible gives us some instructions in Exodus chapter 20.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

I would just want to read it from the Bible.

I'll be reading King James, Exodus chapter 20, verse 22 through 25.

Exodus 20:22–25

And the Lord said unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel, You have seen that I have talked to you from heaven.

You shall not make with me gods of silver, neither shall you make unto you gods of gold.

An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me.

And shall sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, thine oxen, all the places where I record my name, I will come unto thee and I will bless thee.

And if thou wilt make an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone.

For if thou shalt lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.

If you try to make the altar look pretty by you carving out the stones and you laying it out just right, you're actually polluting the altar, God said.

I don't want you to do that.

He's making it very clear.

Moses relay these instructions to the people, and then he relayed them again in Deuteronomy chapter 27.

Deuteronomy 27 · chapter mention

He said, Therefore it shall be when you've gone over Jordan.

So now he's saying, When you get into the promised land, when you've gone over Jordan, that you will set up these stones which I command you this day in Mount Ebel, and you shall plaster them with plaster.

And thou shalt build an altar unto the Lord thy God, an altar of stones.

So now he's instructing them, build this altar, use plaster to hold it together.

Build this altar of stones.

Thou shalt not lift up any tool, any iron tool upon them.

Don't try to make the stones prettier.

Don't try to carve them out the way you want them to look.

Leave them just like they are, just like you found them.

Thou shalt build the altar of the Lord thy God of whole stones, and thou shalt offer burnt offerings therein.

So then we read in Joshua chapter 8, when the children of Israel came, and they came to this place to build the altar.

Joshua 8 · chapter mention

And the Bible tells that story.

Joshua built an altar to the Lord of Israel in Mount Ebel, as Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, an altar of whole stones, over which no man shall lift up any iron.

And they offered thereon burnt offerings unto the Lord and sacrificed peace offerings.

God specifically instructed Israel to not use tools on those stones, but let them be what they are.

Don't beautify the altar.

Don't try to make it pretty.

Don't try to make it appealing.

And that may seem strange to you that he wouldn't even let them shape the stones.

That may seem like that's a bit over the top, but God did not intend for you to notice the human craftsmanship.

God intended to meet you there, and the altar is not the point.

The sacrifice and meeting with God, that's what's the point of the altar.

Because it ain't pretty.

God knew the tendency of our human hearts, and he knew the moment we started reshaping it, the moment we started building it beautiful, the moment we started making it attractive to everybody else, we'd start taking credit for it.

We'd say, Look what I built, look what I did, look how beautiful I made it.

God knew that's the kind of mindset we are as human beings, and God did not want us to notice that part of it.

God wanted us to notice the most important part of the altar.

In Isaiah chapter 66 and verse 2, it the the verse begins, and then at the conclusion of the latter part of the verse says, But to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of contrite spirit, that trembles at my word.

Isaiah 66 · chapter mention

God's not impressed with your craftsmanship.

God's looking for hearts that are open and available for him.

He's not looking for the pretty people, he's not looking for the beautiful people, he's just looking for people that have a heart that's open and hungry and thirsty for him.

The altar is never supposed to showcase human talent.

It's meant to showcase God's mercy.

It's meant to reveal God's kindness, it's meant to reveal God's glory.

It's not meant to make you uh excited or you look with awe and wonder at the beauty.

It's made for you and I to recognize the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

And if we start adding our stuff to it, and we start adding our decorations to it, we start doing what we think to what God has established, we move from worshiping God to admiring ourselves or someone else who may have created it.

Ephesians chapter 2, verse 8 and 9 says, For by grace you're saved through faith and that not of yourself.

Ephesians 2:8

It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.

1 Corinthians 1 and 29 tells us that no flesh should glory in his presence.

God consistently removes the opportunity for our human boasting.

And just still, as human beings, sometimes we spend more time polishing appearances than surrendering our hearts.

We spend more time boasting of our resume rather than surrendering our hearts to God.

We build religions, we build rituals, we build practices, oftentimes while avoiding repentance.

But God calls us, calls us to come to him with hearts open to him, with hearts available to him.

He calls us to an altar, a place of meeting.

It's not necessarily a pretty bench or a pretty place or a pretty decorative piece of furniture, but he calls us to the place where we meet with him, where we come into his presence.

And that altar is not intended to be attractive to you.

It's not intended to be pretty to you.

I hope you'll follow with me for a few moments and just let God speak to you and let God talk to you.

If we try to make it elaborate, if we try to make elaborate off offering altar, excuse me, it will be distracting from the sacrifice.

I know people get in fact they get fascinated with the rituals, with the buildings, with the traditions.

In fact, we get sometimes so drawn in by all those things of our our way of doing things that we forget the entire point of why it was built and what it was for.

Imagine standing before an altar so ornate, so beautiful, so captivating to the eye, that that's your focus.

If that's your focus, you've missed the entire reason for being there.

You've missed the entire moment for being there.

And and that can happen to us.

Religion can become a performance, worship becomes a ceremony, praise becomes emotionalism, tradition becomes a spectacle.

Look at me as I do this, but somewhere in the process, the sacrifice gets lost.

We're bringing a sacrifice to God, we're bringing an offering, we're bringing a gift to God.

It's really not about the trappings of the altar.

In Isaiah, a regular topic for Isaiah, is that the people of Israel are doing the activities of worship, but their hearts not in it.

It starts out even in Isaiah chapter 1.

Isaiah 1 · chapter mention

Much of that chapter is focusing on the people that are doing all the rituals, doing all the activities, but their hearts not in it.

And later in Isaiah 29, he writes, Wherefore the Lord says, For as much as this people draw near to me with their mouths and with their lips, they do honor me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by precept of man.

It's just rituals, it's just routine.

The altar was functioning, the rituals were happening, but God rejected it because there was no transformation taking place.

There was no change in the heart of people, there was no spiritual thing happening in their lives.

They were just doing the religious ceremony.

And let's be honest, as human beings, there's some comfort in the ceremony.

There's some comfort in the tradition.

There's some uh uh acknowledgement there that we embrace.

But there has to be more than just the feelings of Christianity, our ritual, or the trappings of doing it.

Now I'm preaching to you, but I'm preaching to you, even if you come to church every week.

Even if you're here all the time, I'm still preaching to you today.

Because if we're not careful, it becomes the routine, it becomes the stuff we do, it becomes the pattern we're used to, it becomes what we're accustomed to doing, and we're doing it out of just repetitive motion.

But it's got to be more than that.

The altar is more than that, it's greater than that.

It's a transformation where God touches our lives.

Sometimes people practice a lot of religious acts but never truly surrender to God.

The prophet Samuel confronted Saul when he disobeyed.

God's instructions to Saul through Samuel was that he was to destroy the enemy entirely.

But that's not what happened.

Saul defeated the enemy, but then he came back with the booty of war.

He came back with the king, he came back with the best animals, he came back with the best of everything.

He comes back in disobedience, he comes back, and the prophet is prompted by God, sees the situation, and he starts questioning Saul.

And Saul's response was Oh, I brought back sacrifices to God.

Oh, I brought back animals to sacrifice to God.

I had a better plan.

That's what he's saying.

I had a better idea.

Instead of doing what God said, I decided it would be great if we could just bring this back and be a blessing to everybody and bless God by giving sacrifices.

But really, the truth is he was saying that to assuage his own conscience of guilt for not being obedient.

And that's when the prophet looked at him and declared those words that we are we are often we often repeat.

Obedience is better than sacrifice.

God doesn't desire your sacrifice, he desires your obedience, Saul.

Desires your obedience.

Your obedience is important.

A sacrifice never cancels out disobedience.

You've got to obey God, you've got to follow God, you've got to live for God.

The altar is not a place just to manage your guilt.

The altar is a place to change.

The altar is a place to be transformed.

The altar is a place to come into contact with the presence of God.

And it ain't pretty.

It's not intended to be.

The altar is not about penance.

The altar is not a place of punishment.

The purpose of the altar is to meet God.

Notice what God said when he gave those instructions to the Israelites in verse number 24 of Exodus 20.

He said, Every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I'll come to you and bless you there.

If you will set up the altar, if you'll make it what it's supposed to be, if you'll make that place of worship, then I'll come and meet you there.

So it's not intended to be a punishment to you.

But God did promise to meet you there.

And look, without God meeting you there, it's just dirt and stones.

There's nothing pretty bad at all.

There's nothing, there's not that much significance to it.

It's just traditions.

So all the way through the Bible, they made these altars.

Abraham made altars in Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

The Lord appeared unto Abram, and he said to him, I'll give this land, and uh I'll give you this land and land where you've in that land.

He built an altar to the Lord who appeared to him.

And then the very next verse says, He removed from that place into a mountain on the east side of Bethel, and he pitched his tent having Bethel on the west.

And there he built an altar to the Lord again.

So he built another altar.

Built an altar in one place, and then the next place he moved, he built another altar.

He marked the place where God spoke to him, where God talked to him, where God met with him.

We see that happen over and over in the scripture.

Whether it was in Genesis chapter 35 where Jacob made an altar, 2 Chronicles, where the fire fell and the glory of the Lord filled the temple, it wasn't the beauty of the altar, but it was the beauty of God's presence.

Genesis 35 · chapter mention

It's the beauty of what God was doing.

What makes the altar beautiful is not its constructions, it's not its building, it's not the art or the craftsmanship.

What makes it beautiful is it's the place to meet God.

The altar itself is not beautiful, but what happens at the altar is beautiful.

What happens in the moment that God meets you, that's what's beautiful.

That's what's life-changing.

And it's still true today.

The beauty of prayer is not the room in which you're having prayer.

The beauty of prayer is not the great way that you can express your words or the expansiveness of your vocabulary.

The beauty of prayer is that it's your opportunity to come before God and meet with God and have the presence of God touch your life, have the power of God minister to your heart.

The beauty of prayer is that you're meeting with God.

Now, I'm not saying you can't have nice things, but it's not those things.

The beauty of worship is not how great the music is.

Now, the music can be so bad that it's distracting.

Right?

I understand that.

But it's not about the beauty of the music.

It really has nothing to do with the beauty of the music.

What it really has to do with is whether you're going to come and meet God there.

Whether you're going to worship.

And if you're like me, you know, I've been to other places far away that nobody knows.

And I I've sat there in a church service.

While the music was going and the singers are singing, and I thought, whoa, this is rough.

They're not very good singers.

That music's not too good.

I'm not a musician, and I can tell that's off.

Come on.

You've been there.

But then I had to say, wait a minute.

Why am I here?

I had to tell myself, wait a minute, wait a minute.

Why am I here?

Am I here to listen to good music or am I here to worship God?

And and you know, God sort of, I'm confessing, I'm human.

God sort of rebuked me and I said, wait a minute, God, I'm gonna I'm gonna stop that right now because it's not about the quality of the singing, it's not about the quality.

I want good quality, but it's not about the quality of singing.

It's about whether I'm gonna worship God or not.

It's an altar.

The altar doesn't have to be pretty, I can still meet God.

The altar doesn't have to be perfect, I can still meet God here.

The singing doesn't have to be perfect, I can still meet God here.

I can still have God do something in my life.

I can still be transformed by the power of God.

The beauty of the church is not the building it's in.

It's not the trappings of all of that.

We all want the comforts of a nice building, but that's not the beauty of the church.

The beauty is that God meets with his people.

The beauty is that God meets with his people.

So my challenge you today, so you you felt heavy because I'm telling you what the altar is that it ain't pretty.

Say it with me, it ain't pretty.

It ain't pretty.

But it's not intended to be.

It's not intended to be.

It's intended to be a place where I put myself on an altar because I want to meet God.

Because I want God to transform my life.

It's not intended for me to look nice while I do it.

It's not intended for somebody to look at me and say, oh, how dignified.

Oh, they have so much class and dignity.

No, it's intended to be a place where God meets with me.

It's intended to be a place where my hunger for God is expressed.

It's intended to be like the psalmist in Psalm 27, verse number four, where he says, One thing have I desired of the Lord, and that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and inquire in his temple.

We don't need a better method, we don't need a better atmosphere.

What we really need is an encounter with God.

We need a place where God can touch our lives, we need a place that transforms us, where God meets with us, and the presence of God will transform us in a way that no human hands can.

And the greatest altar of all is the ugliest of all.

There was nothing attractive about it.

It was bloody, it was brutal, it was humiliating beyond what we can even imagine.

I won't even get into it today because it would be almost embarrassing to talk about in our in our company today how brutal and terrible and humiliating the cross was.

Ugly, ugly, ugly.

Isaiah prophesied it about Jesus.

There's no beauty that we should desire him.

The ugliest scene of human history, and yet the most beautiful expression of God's love.

The cross itself and by itself is terrible.

It ain't pretty at all.

There's nothing appealing about it.

Only that God meets me there.

It's in the cross.

It's in that ugly altar of the cross where we sinners can meet God's mercy.

It's where justice and grace embraced.

It's where Jesus became the sacrifice for us.

It wasn't the wood.

It wasn't the people, it wasn't the pageantry.

It wasn't all the things that we sometimes see.

It was terribly, it was ugly.

But it's because he bore our sins in his own body on that tree.

Romans 5 and 8, he demonstrated his love towards us that while we were yet sinners, he died for us.

So altars aren't designed to impress people.

They aren't designed to look pretty.

They're designed to bring people to God.

And the moment we try to make it something more palatable, we risk polluting what God wants to do.

The altar's not pretty because repentance is not pretty.

Surrender is not pretty.

Dying to ourselves is not pretty.

The cross wasn't pretty, but it transforms us.

In some ways, that's the reason why we're afraid to come to the altar.

We want to avoid it because the altar is uncomfortable.

I knew when I preached this today that you would be a little uncomfortable the whole time I was preaching.

The altars, it ain't pretty.

When you come, it's supposed to make you surrender to God.

And if you will come, if you will come anyway, if you'll come and surrender, there may be tears, maybe repentance, there will be surrender.

It may not look very dignified when people are desperate for God, but you'll come to that ugly altar, that ugly cross, and put yourself there.

God will meet you there.

God will meet you there.

He's not attracted to polished stones, he's drawn to broken hearts.

Psalm 34 and 18, where we started, the Lord is near unto them that are a broken heart and save such a contrite spirit.

That doesn't mean they've just had a hard time.

That doesn't just mean they've had some difficulties in life.

That means people that'll come and say, you know, I'm not trying to look pretty.

I just have a heart hungry for you.

I have a heart desiring you.

I have a heart seeking you.

I know your enemy wants to make you think, but my life is too messy.

My past is ugly.

I've got too many failures.

I've got too much baggage.

God never asks you to come without any of that.

It's not a pretty place.

You don't need to try to dress it up.

You don't need to pull out your resume.

You need you don't need to s to hide the stuff of your life.

You just come to that ugly place of an altar.

That ugly place of surrender.

And God receives you, and God meets you there, and God transforms your life.

And what you started out was ugly, but what he does in your life is more beautiful than any stones could be.

Any man-made craftsman, any man's touch, any man's work can't even come close to what God does when he transforms our lives.

So today I'm asking you to come to an ugly altar, to an ugly place, a place that's not that appealing, but a place where God can minister to you, a place of surrender, a place of openness, as God can touch your life.

Would you stand with me?