2 Samuel 6:16-23 Dignity and Worship

Of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak is preaching from his series, The Warrior Poet King, Study of Second Samuel. Let's listen in.

Worship, Dignity, and the Choice Before Us

Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here, and it's really good to be back after a couple of weeks of vacation. My family had a great time. We were down in the Smokies for a week, and then we spent a couple of days over in Virginia Beach with family.

So, super good time. It sounds like it was a good week to be away, despite the fact that we did have, we had 70 degrees one Friday in the mountains. The next morning, we woke up to four inches of snow and 20 degrees.

So, Michigan does not have a corner on temperature swings. Apparently, other states get 50 degree swings in 24 hours, too, and then two days later, it was 70 again. So, we did have some good weather while we were gone.

But it really is good to be back. I miss you guys when I'm gone, and I mean that sincerely. You can't see in my heart, but it's the truth. And when I get a chance on vacation to visit other churches, which is something that Lynn and I actually kind of enjoy.

I know some people probably are like, well, I'll just take in a podcast or a live stream or something the week that I'm on vacation, but we enjoy visiting other churches. But I'm always impressed with a couple of things when we get a chance to travel different states or different places and visit other churches.

The first thing that always impresses me is that the church of God is everywhere.

Anybody enthusiastic about that?

You can travel just about anywhere. You can find a church to attend. You can worship together. You can sing songs. You can hear from his word. That's super exciting. But the second thing that always stands out to me when I get a chance to visit other churches is that we have something really unique here, church.

I don't know if you realize that. I feel it, and I see it. We take the word of God seriously here at Recast Church, but we don't take ourselves too seriously here. And I think that combination doesn't always go together.

Do you know what I'm talking about? We're gonna study the word. When we're gonna study the word, we're gonna dig in. We're gonna seek to understand it. We're gonna seek to take God seriously and what he has to say to us.

But we're not super caught up in all the glitz and glamor and smoking lights and trying to just impress with some kind of a show either. We're not taking ourselves too seriously. As a matter of fact, we don't take ourselves seriously hardly at all.

I think that combination isn't always there in churches. It seems to me like it's often the case that churches that stick closely to the word tend to, over time, grow in a level of self-importance, which leads to a strong sense of dignity, which we're gonna see a word that's gonna tie in closely with our message this morning.

But they grow in a sense of dignity and propriety or properness, if I can call it that. That's something that we've sought to avoid over time and not that we're trying to mess everything up. But you've noticed, how many of you notice that our transitions aren't always the most smooth?

Okay, we're not always just everything locked down, but we do the best that we can, but we also recognize that we're fallen humans trying to worship an awesome and glorious and perfect God. But our text this morning is gonna seek to attack a common problem that I think all of us have to deal with in our own hearts.

Every single one of us has to face this head on. You see, the text is gonna offer us a clear and concise choice, and I hope there's nobody in the room that can squeeze out from underneath the choice that's gonna be placed in front of you today.

You're gonna have to walk out of here choosing one thing or the other. And the two things that you must choose behind is on one hand, personal dignity. On the one hand is personal dignity. Will you choose to dignify yourself?

Will you choose to be concerned what others think about you? Will you be concerned for your own reputation and your own standing, your own nobility, your own self-importance? On the other hand, it's gonna be stark what I put in the other hand, it's worship.

Will you have self-dignity and self-nobility, or will you have worship? We're gonna see that there's a pretty hard line between those two in our text this morning. Will you be inhibited in your life of worship?

And when I talk about worship, I'm not just talking about merely singing songs, I'm talking about a life lived before the face of God, a life that would say to a neighbor or a coworker, like, bro, sister, and the truth is that we all need Jesus to testify to somebody else about what is true of you with little to no concern for how that's gonna impact you, with little to no concern about what others are gonna think about you.

Will you be inhibited in your life of worship and praise by fear of what others might think of you? Will you reserve your outward expressions of joy and elation and enthusiasm for buzzer beaters, for touchdowns in the last closing seconds, for windfalls where the money rolls in, for promotions where somebody finally recognizes how good you are, or for monster dunks in this tournament?

When do you reserve your enthusiasm? Where does your fist pump up in the air and you rise up off the couch in joy and gladness and shouts of exclamation? Where does that happen in your life? Was your grasp of the gospel and the knowledge of what you have been saved from enough to shake you from concern over what others think of you?

I wanna caution you before I read this text that this text is not prescribing an outward, a particular and specific outward expression. Dancing in the street in our linens like some college spring break toga party is not the application of this text.

Despite the fact of what we see David doing in the text, looks kind of similar to that. But a heart of exuberant worship is the point of this text. And it's gonna look different in different contexts and different for different people, but it is gonna push the boundaries of what makes you comfortable, what makes others comfortable.

And my hunch is that many of us will be tempted even as I read this, to temper our outward expressions of worship and we will excuse it as a matter of personality. Well, I'm not that expressive. I'm not that outgoing.

Or even we might excuse our reticence to really engage enthusiastically in the worship of our God as cultural propriety. We live in a culture that's pretty subdued, it's not very emphatic, it's not that expressive.

But what I think those excuses are truly made of is more frequently in our hearts and this is where it's gonna take some introspection for us, I think we often, if we're honest, lack awe and wonder that the God of the universe would rescue a wretch like me, wretches like us.

So before we read this text, let me share a little of my own struggles in this area, then we'll read the text and we'll come and we'll actually have an opportunity.

To worship our God together.

Here's a little minor confession. I am frequently moved to tears during our morning worship. I don't know if any of you have ever noticed that or not, but I am and it's often centered on one common theme in my life.

God has been so very good. God has been so very kind. He has been so very patient and incredibly gracious to me. Can anybody testify to that in your life? So incredibly gracious to me. And it impresses me in the gathering of God's people as we sing that it's not just me, it's us.

He has been so kind to us. When I sing here in this gathering, God's kind work in my life and in our church comes flooding into my heart. And this is just me speaking, I don't know if anybody else is impressed in this way at all.

But here's the confession part of this. It's not that I cry or that I'm moved to tears, it's that I try to hide it. It's that I try to hide it. Real men don't cry, right? Real men don't shed tears, especially over a song.

Goodness gracious.

And so I have been at times moved to pretend to scratch my cheek to wipe away the tears during worship. I'm sure to regain my composure before connection time. And I make sure that I regain some semblance of, and here's the trick word, dignity.

Lest anyone see me as weak. This word wants to present all of us with a choice this morning. Will you choose dignity or will you choose worship? So let's open our Bibles or our devices to 2 Samuel chapter six.

2 Samuel six verses 16 through 23. 2 Samuel six, 16 through 23. Recast, this is God's holy and precious word. This is what he desires for us to take in. And for some reason, this is exactly what he wants us to hear.

I believe that it's for the purpose that we would make a choice before him today. As the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michael the daughter of Saul looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord.

And she despised him in her heart. And they brought in the ark of the Lord and set in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it. And David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord.

And when David had finished offering the burnt offerings and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord of hosts. And distributed among all the people, the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, a cake of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins to each one of them.

Then all the people departed, each to his own house. And David returned to bless his household. But Michael, the daughter of Saul, came out to meet David and said, how the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of the servants, female servants, as one of the vulgar fellows shamelessly uncovers himself.

And David said to Michael, it was before the Lord who chose me above your father and above his house to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord. And I will celebrate before the Lord. I will make myself yet more contemptible than this.

And I will be abased in your eyes. But by the female servants of whom you have spoken, by them I shall be held in honor.

And Michael, the daughter of Saul,.

Had no child to the day of her death. Let's pray. Father, as we see a text like this, I pray that you would press in our hearts and our minds rightly what you desire to communicate to each one of us. It is not in the application of outward expressions to open our mouths and sing louder or to raise our hands or that somebody might break out into the aisle and dancing that is the application of this text.

It is a heart change that drives those outward behaviors, that our bodies, our faces, our smiles, our entire selves would be brought into this gospel truth that we are saved and rescued by that which we could never have earned on our own.

The sacrifice of your son was required and has indeed been given on our behalf. I pray that that would light our hearts on fire with enthusiasm, with joy, with gladness, with shouts of praise this morning.

Father, it can be awkward talking about these things because then now we're thinking about raising hands and dancing and those types of things. Father, I pray that you would allow all of that to be washed away in the glory and the beauty of the salvation that you have granted to us and that we would be moved now to sing these songs from that place of rescue granted in your son.

Hope before us, the work behind us done by one other than us so that now in the present we are free to praise, free to rejoice, free to live a life of worship before you because you have rescued us. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, yeah, you can go ahead and be seated.

But as I say, every Sunday, if at any time during the message you need to get up.

And stretch out in the back or if you need more coffee or water back there, if you need to use the restrooms,.

They're out the double doors down the hallway.

On the left-hand side.

And then I ask just for your benefit that you actually keep your Bible, your app, or whatever you're using to access the Bible, keep it open to 2 Samuel 6, verses 16 to 23. What we read earlier is the text for the morning and it's what we're gonna walk through.

Now I wanna start off with just kind of like a little bit of personal reflection about my history when it comes to worship. I was raised in a fairly conservative and subdued context. How many of you would raise your hand and say that was me?

Like that's you too, okay, so that's you. Raised in a little bit of a context that was subdued, the church kind of, I gathered from the church as a young child that austerity was the goal in worship. A formality was the goal of worship.

We took God seriously and we took ourselves at least as seriously as we took God. How many of you know what I'm talking about? Okay, so that is often expressed by being sure that we use limited physical expressions in worship.

Just a reality, hands in the pocket was the safest way to go during any worship time. That's at least the impression that I got. So when I went off to Bible college where they had daily chapel services and there was, it's a fairly conservative school to begin with down in South Carolina.

No it wasn't, Bob Jones, not that conservative. You can talk to Dave Bunn about that one. Just pinned you on that Dave. But I went to Columbia Bible College, the better conservative school in South Carolina.

But anyways, when I attended there, it was fairly conservative yet there was a lot of expression during the chapel services and you can imagine my shock when people did radical things like raise their hands in worship during the singing.

We see in our text here that David enthusiastically is worshiping God. And that's gonna take different cultural forms and different ways. Enthusiastic worship is, it goes all across the board. When you hear me use the word worship, we are gonna, our minds are gonna naturally gravitate towards songs and towards expressions of singing.

But mind you that when I'm talking about worship, it is a whole life kind of thing. It is how we interact with our spouse, how we interact with our kids, how we interact with our parents, how we interact on the road with other drivers, how we interact towards our employer.

All different kinds of aspects that come into play when we're talking about doing what we do before the face of God. Now certainly in the text, there's something about singing. Certainly in the text, there's something about musical instruments.

There's dancing, there's this kind of thing going on and so it's not bad for us to think in terms of that more narrow focus for this text. But I wanna make sure that you apply it more broadly in your life to a life given over to God in enthusiasm and exuberance.

But what's going on in the text is that David is dancing with all of his might before the ark of God as it's being brought up into Jerusalem. And you can go through all of chapter, really all of chapter six of 2 Samuel.

It's kind of a worship chapter. He goes to bring the ark up and it doesn't go well and then so they get sidetracked and he leaves it at a dude's house. That dude is heavily blessed and so David comes back in recognizing the goodness of God and goes to bring the ark back up into Jerusalem.

That ark of the covenant, just so that you know, it's a three foot by two foot by two foot box that symbolized the presence of God. There's a photographic evidence of it right there. That's probably a picture of the real deal right there.

No, we don't know exactly what it looked like but we do know that it was inlaid with gold. It had two angels on the top with wings facing one another. That's probably a fairly reasonable look to it there if you saw Raiders of the Lost Ark, that one works too.

But whatever, you need to understand that this is not Israel's God, okay? They were bringing God into Jerusalem. They were bringing a symbol of his presence into Jerusalem. Jerusalem has been made by King David, the political capital of his Jewish kingdom but in our text it's becoming the religious capital of the Jewish faith and is so all the way down to where we live today.

Jerusalem is still the religious capital of the Jewish faith today. But not everyone shares David's enthusiasm. He says he's dancing with all of his might before the ark. How many of you ever danced with all your might about anything?

Some of you are like, I've danced. Dancing with all your might sounds a little exhausting, sounds a little excessive, sounds a little like strange terminology to use for it. But our text this morning has very little to outline so when we're trying to wrap our mind around this, there's two threads that we're gonna pull on this morning.

I think the text weaves these two thoughts back and forth and the one thread is the expectation of outward dignity that we see on the part of David's wife, Michael. So she has an expectation of outward dignity but the second thread is the lack of self-awareness apparent in the exuberant worship of King David.

Put more simply, the contrast is this. On the one hand, enthusiastic worship, David. On the other, dignified demeanor on the part of his wife, Michael. We see in verse 16 that David is leaping and dancing, words that indicate significant movement here.

Dancing, I can leap but I can't dance, okay? So I mean, there's a difference between leaping and dancing. He's doing both and we see that Michael, where's Michael's location in this? Michael's location is on the sidelines despising him and I have sat where Michael sat.

She's on the sidelines and my question is, have you sat on the sidelines as well? That slide came up a little early and it probably distracted you but we're gonna explain what that slide is here.

In just a second.

So I see everybody's attention up there but just listen for just a second, we'll get there.

Yeah, there's that thing.

That thing is about early on in those chapel services at Columbia Bible College where I attended. Again, I remind you, it was a conservative Bible college but I sat back in those first few weeks of chapel and I observed things I had never seen before.

Of the more expressive students around me, I took in my surroundings. Any of you ever been in a context, you're new to a church, you're just checking things out, how do people respond, what are they doing?

There were girls doing the dueling light bulbs in worship. There were the fishermen showing off the size of their catch, right? There were the students raising their hand to be called on by the teacher, one of my favorites, I do that frequently.

Sometimes that leads right into washing the windows, you know what I'm talking about. There were those carrying the TV, some were carrying the widescreen. You have all different kinds of things. Some of the students seemed to apparently be struggling with heartburn, just a little bit of heartburn going on there.

All of those things and if we can't laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at, right? How seriously are we gonna take ourselves? I mean, this is not that bad. By the way, all of this stolen straight from Tim Hawkins.

Any of you ever seen his little bit on that? How many of you know what I'm talking about? So I gotta give him credit, that's not me, that's him. But if I'm being honest, all that we can laugh about, we can joke about it, we can do that in worship,.

All of that's good, fair game.

But I'm being honest to my shame when I say that observing these things from a heart of my upbringing and where I was coming from built up to me, in me, a heart of doubt that led me to what I would call a relative despising, like the heart of Michael here is despising David for his acts of worship, for his outward appearance of worship.

And I would say that I had that heart of Michael early on. Now I didn't despise them in terms of wanting harm to come to those students who were raising their hands in worship, but I despised them in this sense.

I viewed them as foolish or misguided or just maybe simply just trying to draw attention to themselves and I remember a particular specific service like it was yesterday, another student three rows in front of me, a guy about my height, a pretty tall guy, did a full-on Rocky, full-on Rocky, okay.

During an entire worship song, okay, got my attention. Full-on Rocky, are you ready for it though? The floor wasn't enough so he stood on his chair. He's standing on his chair, three rows in front of me, full-on Rocky, okay.

So I have to tell you, I thought of him as kind of strange. I was confident he was only seeking attention. In my heart, I'm just confessing that I saw him as weak. I thought the whole thing to be strange and I thought of him as primarily interfering with my worship, interfering with my worship.

Is anybody with me just at least a little in the awkwardness of this young man's expression of worship, standing on his chair, doing a full-on Rocky? Anybody think that he might have been trying to get attention?

Gonna raise your hand if you think there might've just been an element where he's just trying to get attention and I've set you up because I also equally need to ask, does anybody need to confess a heart like Michael's?

Does anybody need to confess. A,.

Could you see that guy's heart? Could I see what was going on in him in that moment? Who made me judge over this man's worship? Who made me the judge of his relationship between him and his God? Is that me, is that my role, is that my job?

The heart of Michael is gross. I wanna point out that we see in verse 16 what we can never see without the Spirit. We can never see what's going on in another person's heart. We judge it all the time, do we not?

To our shame, we judge what's going on in other people's hearts. We can't see that but we have in the text because God's Spirit reveals it to us, what's going on in David's heart, what is he doing and what is Michael doing?

We see in verse 16 where Michael's heart is. The Spirit reveals it to us and it is indeed gross. It is despising her husband for his expression of worship to the Almighty God. She finds him to be undignified and foolish in his worship.

Of course, she doesn't leave it in her heart. We already read the text but so far in verse 16,.

It's in her heart.

Well, the ark arrives at the tabernacle which would have been the sanctioned tent that David has pitched there in Jerusalem where the ark is gonna stay until the temple of God is built by his son Solomon.

And there they offer, it tells us in the text, burnt offerings which were offerings for sin. They were fully burnt up and then the remnants taken outside of the city. The peace offerings are unique here and they need a little bit of explanation to explain what the atmosphere would have been here.

There were sacrifices to cover sins, the burnt offerings, but then there were also sacrifices of celebration that we have peace with God. The peace offerings were cooked and eaten by the people and what that indicates for us is that the atmosphere surrounding this entire event would have been more celebratory with like just think a huge outdoor barbecue is going on.

Everybody is together, the nation is celebrating, the moving of the symbol of the presence of God up into Jerusalem, there's dancing, there's songs and everybody is celebrating their God. The text makes a point of letting us into what's going on in David's heart here as well.

We see Michael's despising, but verse 17 tells us what he's doing and he's doing this all in his heart before the Lord. All of this is before the Lord. This is a God-centered event, even for David, for the people, for the nation, for those worshipers.

The God-centered event, not a David-centered event. He was not the main attraction, God was. All of these activities, not just the dancing are worship and again, I want to emphasize to you that it's not just singing, it's not just music, it's not only that which surrounds music that is true worship.

We talk about worship music and we talk about praise music and we use the word worship very narrowly where it needs to be thought broadly as anything that is done before the Lord. How many different kinds of things were you made and designed to do?

Anything that you can do before the Lord is worship. Therefore, everything except for sin is open, is up for grabs when it comes to worship. Are you getting what I'm saying in that? So this is pretty significant what's going on here.

He is doing this before the Lord. And he offered a blessing over the people in the name of the Lord, he speaks blessing over them. He is the king and on this day, he is leading his people but here's what you need to understand, church.

David is leading his people under the authority in the worship of God. You see, the people of Israel have one God and even King David serves him. Even King David is a servant to this God. And in verse 19, the celebration continues with a ginormous blessing from the king.

All of Israel, men and women alike, receive a cake of bread, a portion of meat and a cake of raisins, the text tells us. I believe that this was in part a continuation of David's worship in generosity.

It was no potluck that day, bring a dish to pass or whatever, no, the sides, the main course and the dessert were all provided at the cost of the king. I believe he's being lavish in his gifts not to buy the favor of his people.

Oh look, he gives us stuff but instead, I believe David is worshiping God through generosity. He is giving of himself, of his own flocks, of his own resources to bless the people God has entrusted to him.

He's being generous.

So it's from this high place of celebration here in the text. He has been worshiping, the nation has been worshiping, they've been celebrating, they've been eating a feast together. All with worship, musical instruments blaring and shouts of praise and acclamation to God.

And from that place, David returns home and the text tells us directly what his intention is to do when he gets home, to bless his family. He wants to give them a blessing, he wants to honor them. Back in verse 16, we were informed of what's waiting for him at home.

Many of you know that sometimes, sometimes if you knew what was waiting for you at home, you might drive around the block a couple more times. If you talk to God about it or something, right? She doesn't wait in the text for him to get in the door.

How many of you know that if your wife meets you at the doorstep and comes out to the car to talk with you, uh-oh, what did the kids do? Uh-oh, what happened today, right? He's going to bless them and this is not going to go well.

A little side note on this that I think is just kind of worth mentioning and it's not drawn straight from the text so I just want to be clear about that, but everyone, I highly recommend that you attempt to use a little time on your commute to pray for what is waiting for you at home, men and women alike.

It might be now, yeah, well, hold it, there we go. It might be right now, I don't know how far your commute is. For some people, it's turned into a few steps down the hallway. For some of you, the commute is upstairs, some of it's downstairs, some of you are driving back and forth to work, so I don't know.

If you're working remotely, you very well might find yourself in the same household. But I'm seriously recommending that you take a couple of minutes when the work is done in order to remind yourself that God has been at work already in your family for either blessing or challenge before you ever walk in and ask God to prepare you for whatever is going on there.

Now, I'm not suggesting to you, by the way, in any of that, that David's wife, Michael, would have had a different response only if David had prayed beforehand or something like that. No, I'm just suggesting it is wise to prepare your own heart in transition times from one thing to the next in prayer.

I encourage you as much as possible to use those transition times in your day to talk to God about what's just happened and what's coming up. But three times in this text, it's interesting how Michael is introduced to us.

We've already seen her in 1 Samuel. Back in 2017, we went through that book and we've seen her all mentioned one time here being restored to David as his wife. But she's identified for us three times by the same title, Daughter of Saul.

That's not a fabulous title for an individual. The author reveals her in this way to show us that she is a remnant of an old, fading dynasty of King Saul. And I point this out because there's a really significant contrast that's drawn out for us between 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel, the kingdom of Saul and the kingdom of David.

You see, she represents a remnant of a different way of doing things under her father's rule. You see, her father, when he was king, had a very different mindset, a very different heart that was demonstrated in the way that he did things.

So his heart was different than David's. And the text tells us as much, that Saul has the kingdom ripped from him because his heart is not for God and he's gonna be replaced by one.

Who has a heart after God.

So there's this weird situation that happened in 1 Samuel 15 that really, I think, ties in well, clarifies for us the distinction between the way that Saul sought to work with God and the way that David, with a heart given to God, works with God.

So the prophet Samuel has come to Saul and directly told him that the Lord is tearing your kingdom away from you. And he's giving it to one who truly loves me, says God, through the prophet Samuel. So Saul was still concerned, though, after that interaction, in that context in 1 Samuel 15, he is still concerned for his appearances, for the way that the people view him.

Now, you don't love God, so I'm taking the kingdom from you, and he says, but I'm worried about what the people are gonna think. So in 1 Samuel 15 30, Saul showed his concern by pleading with the prophet Samuel,.

Saying these words.

This is what he says to Samuel. I've sinned, yet honor me with the prophet, I mean, honor me now before the elders of my people and before Israel. I've sinned, yet honor me now before the elders of my people and before Israel.

And return with me, that I may bow before the Lord, and here's the really operating word, your God. That I can return and bow before the Lord, my God. No, Saul doesn't say that. He says to Samuel that I might go before the people, and your presence with me is gonna give me cloud, it's gonna give me, it's gonna boost me before the people, and then in the presence of the gathering of the people of Israel, I'm gonna bow and I'm gonna worship your God, Samuel.

You hear a problem there? He is putting up pretense. He wants to do a show, Saul begs Samuel to at least give the pretense before the people that everything was okay with his heart. And he was willing to bow publicly before the Lord, who he identified not as his God, but as Samuel's God.

Think about what Saul was doing here and think about what it would have looked like if you were one of the people of Israel in that crowd that day. He is worshiping. He is worshiping the Lord publicly before the people.

If you had seen, if you had been there and you had seen Saul bow before God in polite dignity, before God in quiet prayer, you would have thought you were watching what? You would have thought you were watching worship.

You would have thought you were seeing the king worshiping your God. But now contrast that, imagine that you see Saul there bowing before God in polite dignity, or you see David in his linens cutting a rug before the ark.

Which one looks like dignified and true worship? Which one would you take for worship? I contend to you that many of us were raised to respect the demure dignity of King Saul who bows publicly before a God he does not love and has no interest in honoring.

Outward actions of worship are never and can never be the point of true worship because what God desires is not our outward behavior, be it bowing in demure prayer or dancing with all of your might before the ark, if it is made up and frothed up into a frenzy of flow and enthusiasm and excitement and laser lights and smoke and mirrors and all of the things and it's not in your heart, it is a waste of time.

It is actually damnable, it is condemnable that we would put up a pretense of worshiping this God.

You hear what I'm saying? This is a serious thing, very serious.

We can't look at the outward and determine whether a person is worshiping God.

Do you agree with me on that?

You cannot look at what a person is doing, that's worship. Look at him dance, look at his hands raised, look at his rocky, or look at his quiet reflection and singing that hymn with the right vibrato and the right, we can't see worship.

But believe me, church, God can. God can. He sees right into your heart and he knows what you're thinking about, he knows what you're working through. Anybody glad that he's gracious at that point? Because I have never offered pure worship to God.