 Okay. Welcome everyone. Thank you all for joining in. It's wonderful to see you. We get started. Can I request one of us to restart us off with the word of prayer, please? Anyone? Please start us off with the word of prayer. Let us pray. Father Almighty God, in the name of Jesus, we thank you for yet a gift of life. Thank you for another semester that we are going to hear your word again. We pray for your Holy Spirit to come and console us, to give us direction, to strengthen us, to give us the grace to continue in your presence till we finish the course. We surrender the pastor into your hand that give him more knowledge, more wisdom to accomplish this course. We pray, believing all this in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. Thanks Paul. Great. So welcome to the worship ministry course. It's wonderful as I mentioned to see you all, all the familiar names. It's been a while. It seems very, it's been too long. It feels like it's been too long. But yeah, super glad to see you all and I'm excited to share a few things about worship ministry and the things that I have learned over the years and how we as a church, APC function, how the worship ministry and APC functions. And I hope that you get to learn along the way and yeah, let's see how that goes. Okay. Are you excited to learn a little bit about worship ministry? Looking forward to it. No sir. Great. Okay. Awesome. Thanks. So I don't want to go too much into detail about, you know, what is worship and what not, because we've already learned all that in our first years, isn't it? But just for the sake of, you know, just refreshing our memories and revisiting the topic, you know, worship can be so many things, right? Like if I were to ask you, let's start off with that question, classic question. What does worship mean to you? Just type it in the chat section or you can feel free to unmute and speak just very quickly, briefly what worship means to you. Please feel free to share. Right. Here we go. We're getting some responses. Worship is engaging with God, yeah, exalt God in every detail of our life. Yeah, wonderfully said. Exalt God in every detail of our life. Well, that's what we spoke about in detail in the first years. I know it's been two years, but let's dig a little deeper. Hello, success. Thanks for joining in. Good to see you. Everybody else. Go on, go on. What does worship mean to you? Good morning, sir. Good morning, my pastor. I'm happy to see you this year. I'm so grateful to be part of the family again. Likewise, success. Good to see you too. Wonderful to have you. So, yeah, as in worship is lifting up his name and where we humble ourselves and give God all the glory. Yes. And so we can go on with all other definitions, right? And all the answers will be right. I'm pretty sure. And so when we talk about worship ministry, there are two different words, obviously, isn't it? And so we look at worship and ministry, right? So if worship is engaging with God, if worship is, you know, we exalt God in every detail of our life, if worship is a lifestyle, if worship is communion with God, worship is recognizing and acknowledging who God is. If you remember from the first year, isn't it? Worship is reverence to God. Worship is a response to an encounter with God. All those things, isn't it? So if one of the things is communion with God. Yes. So if worship is communion with God, community coming together in union, that's what communion is, isn't it? Becoming one with God. If worship is communion with God and ministry, the literal meaning for ministry is the act of service or the act of serving or even more literal meaning of that is a cup bearer. That's what it is, a cup bearer, right? And so if worship is communion with God and ministry is the act of serving, okay, just pay attention. So if worship is communion with God and ministry is the act of serving, then so then worship ministry can be looked at as the act of serving communion with God. That is not the only definition. That's one of the definitions we can, or the one of the ways or perspectives that we can look at worship ministry, right? Is we come together in union with God, become in agreement with God and to serve Him and to serve His people. That's simply what worship ministry is. And so in a very brief conclusion, worship ministry is not a performance hood, right? It's a servant hood or a priest hood. So today worship ministry has, at least on the outside, that it definitely does not look like priest hood. It looks a lot like performance hood. It's become an industry in itself, right? Worship ministry has its own awards like dow awards and recognitions and whatnot. We will talk later in the course about awards and if it's right or wrong and whatnot. But if there's one thing that I'd like you to take away from this course is that worship ministry is not a performance hood. It's a priest hood. It's a servant hood, right? It is not a road to stardom and success, but a road to humility and invisibility, right? So that is worship ministry in a chess. And that's what we will be learning together is about servant hood, about priest hood and about the road to humility and whatnot, right? Are you with me? So far, yeah, I hope you are. So in this course, we will learn about everything what I've just mentioned and also we will learn a little bit about the organizational aspect of it. The administrative aspect of running a worship ministry. How worship ministry is not just coming together in a Sunday morning, sing a few songs, two fast songs, two slow songs, say bye-bye to everybody and then go back home. That alone is not worship ministry. We will learn about all the other administrative aspects, all the other organizational aspect of worship ministry and how you as a pastor or a senior pastor or you as a leader can work together with your senior pastor to make a successful worship ministry in your church and to serve the people better. Okay, so those are all the things that we're going to learn. The organizational aspect, the administrative aspect, the spiritual aspect as well. For the huge part in the beginning, we will learn a lot about the spiritual aspect of it and then move towards the organizational aspect of it. Okay, all right. So I hope you all are doing absolutely well behind the camera that I cannot see you. Let's get started with chapter one. Okay, so as I mentioned for the huge part, we will look at the spiritual aspect of worship ministry and we'll briefly look at, just go a little bit more deeper into the theology of worship and how worship ministry was organized and administered in the Old Testament and how worship ministry was organized and administered in the New Testament. Okay, and so we're going to learn from the life of Abraham to Moses to David from the tabernacle of Moses to the tabernacle of David and how worship was organized in the New Testament, in the synagogues and how the Jews worshiped all these things. Okay, so let's get started in chapter one. I want us to look at the life of Abraham. Right, and so again, let's communicate a little bit. When we speak about, or when we mentioned the name Abraham, what comes to your mind? What does Abraham kind of mean to you? Oh, faith, matter of faith, father of faith. Okay, what else? Come on guys, I know you all can message really fast using your fingers and I'm sure you can also type pretty fast. So when we mentioned the word name Abraham, what comes to your mind first? Father of many nations. Father of many nations. Okay, thank you. Father of many nations. Faith, promises, friend of God. Yeah, it was a counter done to him. He was a friend of God. Yeah, profit, sacrifice. Right, awesome. Yeah, the list can kind of go on a little bit, but among the many things that Abraham was known for, he was one as a father of faith, a man of faith, promises, he was known as a friend of God, kind of prints to certain people, sacrifice and whatnot. Among all these things, one of the things that Abraham is known for and not known enough is that he is also known as the man of altars. Right, he's the man who built altars along the way. But let's very quickly look at, I'm just going to share my screen. Okay, can you all see the screen? Yeah, okay. I hope you all can. Now, this is the map. This map has a journey of three people, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And on the top left, you'd see the different color lines mentioned, signifies whose journey that was. But let's focus, fix our eyes on the red line. That is the journey of Abraham. Okay, now, Abraham's journey, he's from the place called Ur. The Chaldeans, that's what it is. So this is where Abraham was when God calls him. Now, when we read our Bible, his story really starts in Genesis chapter 12, isn't it? Now, it's amazing that the first, at least the first 11 chapters in the Bible, if a new person is reading the Bible for the first time, it might look like an absolute failure. As in from chapter one, chapter one is okay, but then you see from chapter three onwards, it's like everything is going downhill. You know, the sin enters and not really great stories, like Noah's story sounds great, but you know, because of the Ark and whatnot, but then the context of the Noah story, why God tells Noah to build an Ark, is because people were evil, the times were evil, everybody did evil in the eyes of the Lord, et cetera, et cetera. And everybody, you know, if you're reading, if you're someone who's reading the Bible for the first time, the first 11 chapters, there'd be like such a failure. And you'll feel like, okay, I'm going to give up and close the book and probably go away. But you know, our God is not like that. You know, he's seen through all these lives from chapter one, right? He's from the creation, you know, from... He was there before. He's the Alpha and the Omega. And he's seen all these things in the 11 chapters and he still doesn't give up. He's like, okay, you know what? I'm going to start a new race of people. Only God can do something like that. It's like, for example, you take a person from a nation from the West, pluck a person from the nation from the West and then place him in the East and say, okay, you are this from today. I mean, only God can kind of do that. And that's exactly what's happening in the life of Abraham is that Abraham comes from a land and also his background of polytheism. Polytheism is he was an idol worshiper. That means he also worshiped many gods. That was the culture of his people, the Chaldeans and the place that he comes from, right? A place called Ur. And then you... We look at this and every time... So I kind of show this image every semester. You know, every time we learn about this chapter and every time I look at it, it's just very inspiring, at least for me. And so that's why I share this image with everybody else is... And it's all related to what we're about to learn today. Is that God calls Abraham and he tells him to leave his land, to leave his relatives, to leave his father's house. And all the Bible has to say is that Abraham packed his stuff without hesitating, without questioning, without asking where, when, how, what, why. Without asking anything, he just... He took off. Let's go on this journey from Ur. He goes to Babylon, follow the red line. He all goes up north to Haran. Then he comes down. He's coming somewhere. He's going, passing to Damascus. He's taking Uttar to Hobba for a short time and he's coming back, going to Damascus. Then he reaches a place called Bethel. Now, I want you to remember where Bethel is. I want you to remember where Abraham was and where Bethel is. It's literally on the other side, isn't it? If he's in the east, Bethel is on the other side of the land that he's going to. Then he comes down south, from Mariah, Hebron, Bershiba. It goes all the way to Egypt. Again, it's very important for us to remember where Egypt is as well. You see where he was and where he comes. That's quite an awesome journey, isn't it? Yes, no, maybe. Would you like to go on a journey like that? Would you go on a journey like that? I'm a Christian pastor, yes. I will definitely go on a journey like that. The beauty is, along this way, everybody says that journey is more important than the destination, isn't it? Along this journey as Abraham travels, he gets to learn something new of God. He seems to be having encounters of God along this journey. He's getting more familiar with this God that has called him out of this place. Along the way, he builds altars. Each of those altars signifies something. There's a parallel that's drawn in Hebrews 11 of what those altars signify. That's what we will also learn today. Guys, are you with me so far? Everything okay? I believe so. Now, what does altar again mean to you? There are a few answers in your notes, but before you look at it, you tell me what does altar signify to you? Talk to me, chat, fill in the chat. A place of sacrifice. Guys, a place of sacrifice, a place of worship. A place of sacrifice, a place of worship. What else? Let's think about everything what an altar stands for and a place of giving thanks. A place of sacrifice, a place of worship, a place of giving thanks, a place of thanksgiving, a place of remembering his promises. A place of remembering his promises. A place of reference. Reference or reference? The word altar in the scripture was, as you mentioned, a place of sacrifice. It means it was a place of slaughter. It was not a beautiful place. There was blood shed. There was blood everywhere. Death took place over there. It was a place of laying down your life. In other words, it was a place of an absolute surrender, not just surrender, not just 99% surrender, a surrender to the point of death where you say, I am dying to myself. In return, it symbolized acknowledgement of an approach to an appreciation of God. And all of those means one thing, which is worship. It symbolized acknowledgement of. What does that mean? Acknowledgement of who God is. And how you approach him, appreciation of who he is. It was a place of surrender, a place of laying down your life. You're saying, I'm giving complete control to you. It's a place of remembering his promises. It is a place of thanksgiving. It was a place of death. It was a place of bloodshed, et cetera, et cetera. Right. And another thing, what is very important for us to keep in mind was an altar was a place. It was a common ground or a meeting place. It was like a bridge between heaven and earth. That's where a divine exchange would happen. It's a place where a collusion, a collusion of two different worlds would happen. And we go back to the Garden of Eden. Garden of Eden was the meeting place, a common ground where humanity would meet with divinity. But when sin entered, we lost that. We'll talk more about that in detail later when we speak about, when we learn about the Tabernacle of Moses. But the Garden of Eden was a meeting place, a common ground, but we lost that when sin entered. And so later to re-institute that act of worship, of coming together as a temporary fixed, altars was being introduced. We're not going to go into the details and the history of altars, what not, because we can only speak about it for an entire month. But that's what altars represented. It was a bridge between heaven and earth, a common ground, a meeting place where humanity met with divinity. There was an exchange that was happening, a divine exchange that was happening. And so primarily an altar was a place of worship where God was adored for who he is and what he has done. Only burnt offerings were offered to him in the days of patriarchs. And then the laws of Moses was, because the laws of Moses was not yet given. And then later comes the Tabernacle of Moses where a lot more happened. It was a place of testimony and everything what we've just mentioned. And so once we understand everything on all of what these altars mean and stand for, it suddenly gives us a different perspective to everything what Abraham did. Right? All okay? Are you with me so far? Okay. I leave that map on the screen for us to just have a perspective as we go through different chapters. All right. Let's just go to Genesis chapter 12. Okay. Abraham, so let's just look at Genesis chapter 12. I'm going to read verse one because it says, Now the Lord said to Abram, Get out of your country from your family, from your father's house to a land that I will show you. Okay. To a land that I will show you. Now can you share something that is significant from that verse that kind of stands out in just that verse? What stands out in that verse one for you? Now the Lord said to Abram, Get out of your country from your family and from your father's house to a land that I will show you. Just reading that the first time. What kind of stands out for you? Get out. Okay, Jeff, if you know. All right. Come on, guys. Talk to me. Talk to me fast. Anita, Paul, Zilatoli, Linden, Abul. Okay. The Lord said. All right. Sveshish, Roslyn, Ribi, go. Okay. So you have get out. You have the Lord said. You have go. Okay. I'm still waiting. Paul, Georgia. The Lord said to Abram to get out of his country and he will show you where he need to be going. So the whole verse, Zilatoli. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, thank you. So, yeah, it's amazing you can get out of your country from your family and your father's house. You know, it's, I'm reminded of the time where Jesus calls his disciples. He says, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. It's like, and in the Bible says they left their nets. They put it down and they left. It's, you know, it's something there, you know, it's something about the voice of God that made them leave everything and just go. And what stands out for me in that verse is God says in the last line to a land that I will show you. That means he did not yet show Abraham where he was going to go. The first thing was that he wanted him to get out and the revelation of where he was going to go was based on him willing to get out. Yes, right to the land that I will show you. But, you know, we are not, we are not like people like that. Like as we want to know what's going to happen. If I make this decision now, where is it going to take me? What's going to happen? Where am I going to go? If you're in Bangalore, I want to know if I'm going to a place if there is parking space. Only, so that's the situation in Bangalore right now is. So, but that's the beauty of Abraham's journey as he begins is that he just takes off, get out of his country and he just goes on this journey, not knowing where, what this land is and God to show him the land here. Okay, so that's where we are. We are at and so to a land that I will show you and then God tells him gives him a bunch of promise and verse four, it says, so Abraham departed as the Lord had spoken to him and Lot, his nephew, went with him and Abraham was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. Now, something has happened in verse four. We all know that Abraham was from the land of Ur and God tells, get out, he left, he starts on this journey and then now he's at the place called Haran, right on top, north, right? And now at this time when he was in this place called Haran, he was 75 years old. That means he must have been a year or two younger, maybe a year, I don't know, I'm just saying. Okay, when he left the place called Ur or whatever. So he was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. Is the map helping? I love maps, okay. I like just looking at them, stating at them. It kind of helps me understand the Bible a little better. So verse five, it says, then Abraham took Sarai, his wife and Lot, his brother's son and all their possessions that had acquired in Haran and they departed to go to the land of Canaan. So they came to the land of Canaan. Verse six, Abraham passed through the land to the place of Shechem. And as far as the terribent tree of Morah and the Canaanites were in the land. Verse seven, the Lord appeared to Abraham and said to your descendants, I will give this land. And there he built an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him. The first altar is built in a place called Shechem. Right? And so the Lord appeared to him and said to your descendants, I will give you this land. And there he built an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him. There's so many things that kind of stands out and kind of sings in just this first altar. And you can find a lot of materials online about the altars of Abraham and what they signify. And each altar has its own title. And there are certain titles that I have given which stood out for me. And so maybe when you read these scriptures and other time, every altar might signify something else for you, which is absolutely fine. Okay? But the first altar is titled as, in my opinion, as the altar of obedience. And it says, God tells him to go. He goes. He comes to a place. And then God in verse seven tells him, okay, to your descendants, I will give this land. It's interesting to notice or note that God doesn't tell, I'll give you this land. This is to your descendants. If it was me, I'm like, Lord, why did you ask me to come out of this land to give this land to my descendants? What about me? See my mind thinks like this. Right? What about you? So God tells Abraham to your descendants, I will give this land. And his response is he builds an altar to the Lord. What was altar? And altar is a place of thanksgiving, a place of worship, a place of surrender, a place of coming in agreement with the Lord, a place of worship, isn't it? So there he builds his first altar to the Lord and the altar of obedience. Now, when you look at, can someone go to Hebrews chapter 11 verse eight, please? Can someone read Hebrews 11 verse eight, please? Yeah, somewhat. Hebrews chapter 11 verse eight. By faith, Abraham obeyed and he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. It says it was by faith that Abraham obeyed. Right? And when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance, he went without knowing where he was going. And suddenly this map even makes even more sense, isn't it? He went out by faith. He obeyed God. Okay, so we have to remember that Abraham in his life at that point of time, now let's say he was even 70 years old when God encounters him. Right? And it says that he was 75 in Haran. That means he was halfway through his journey. He must have been a couple of years younger and whatnot. 70 years at least. Now, there's a verse in the Bible about Moses. It says, Moses makes this prayer, show me your ways that I may know you. It's actually chapter 33. Moses cries out, he's saying, show me your ways that I may know you. Now, at this time when Moses is making that prayer, he is approximately 80 years old. In Psalm 103, I forget which verse exactly. Let me see if I can find it. Give me a minute, guys. I wasn't ready for this yet. Psalm 103 verse 7. Okay, Psalm 103 verse 7. It says, he made known his ways to Moses, but his acts to the children of Israel, his acts or his deeds to the people of Israel. That means the people of Israel saw the acts of God, the actions, the deeds of God, the miracles, the signs and wonders. They saw the sea being parted. They saw the bread coming down from heaven, the quail, and bitter waters being made sweet or water coming out of the rock, the red sea being parted and all of that. They saw the acts and the deeds of God. And leaving all that aside, it says separately, he made known his ways to Moses. Okay, now what I'm trying to say is at this point is Moses was approximately 80 years old when he makes that prayer. Now, when he's 80, think about all the ways of life that he has learned by then, the different ways. You know, for 40 years, he was a prince of Egypt. He has learned the ways of an Egyptian. He was not just the prince, he was also a warrior. He's learned the ways of a warrior. He's learned so many things. Now, he knows all these things. He's learned the ways of the Egyptian. He knows the ways of a warrior, fight a soldier. And then later, he helps his father-in-law shepherding his flock. Another thing, he's learned the ways of a shepherd. His father-in-law is a Midianite. That means he's also learned the ways of the Midianite and his wife Zipporah was from the clan of Midianites. So, he's learned the ways of the Midianites. He's learned the ways of a shepherd. He's learned the ways of the Egyptian. He's also later in life, he's also figured out that he's a Hebrew. He's learned the ways of the Hebrews. So, he's learned all these things, his ways. But then he says, Lord, I know all these ways. I have learned all these things. But now I want to know your ways. If there's anything that we need to know as human beings is that if you get used to a certain way, a certain way of living. Have you heard the statement? This is the kind of way I live. This is the way of life that I live. Now, let's say, you know, when I got married, I was 27 years old. My wife was 25. And so, I have lived a certain way for 27 years of my life. And my wife have lived a certain way for 25 years of her life, separately as individuals. I'm used to a certain way of living. And now we are married. Now we are living under the same roof. The ways of my life is surprising her and the ways of her life is surprising me. So, she wants to change the way that I live. I do certain things and I want to change the way of certain things that she does. That's the face force you use. That's the shampoo you use. Is anybody understanding what I'm trying to say? What I'm trying to say is that if you are used to a certain way of life, it is very hard to unlearn and learn something new. Especially if you've gotten used to it for a long period of time. Are you with me? Is anybody following what I'm trying to say? Right? Why is there all this petty friction between husband and wife with regards to the way of living? They have learned to live a certain way for 20, 30, 25, 30 years. And that's not a short amount of time. It's a huge amount of time, isn't it? That's one-fourth of their life. Now, let's shift our focus back to Abraham. We leave Moses aside. Abraham was 70, 75 years old. Think about all the ways of life that he has learned. 70 years old. He must have learned so many things about his civilization, about his culture, about his people's gods and worships. All of these ways. And all of that he let go just like that. And that he heard this voice that he has never heard before. He says, get out. He left. What a beautiful thing, isn't it? And so, I think I'll pause here for this hour. But that's the story of Abraham and how it begins. And we see that his first altar signifies the altar of obedience. He stepped out by faith, not knowing where he was going. And he left because God told him to go. And then in response, he builds an altar. And let's call that first altar as the altar of obedience. Everybody okay? So we'll pause here for this session and we'll resume after our break. I'll see you.