 Hello again. Good morning. How was the week so far? Okay, okay. So, so. Good week, bad week. Anybody having a bad day? Excellent. What about those online having a good day so far? Bad day, good week, bad week. All of you slept well? Slept well? Did you sleep well? No. The heads are going all over the place. I'm so confused now. It's like, yeah, I didn't sleep well. So, I think I might be a little cranky. Well, let's just pray. Okay, we'll start off with very it. Father, we welcome you once again. Holy Spirit, we honor you. We love you. We pour our affection, our devotion. Lord, all our praise and worship and adoration on you, Lord, because you are worthy. Continue to move among us. Continue to speak to us. Continue to pour out your wisdom over us, even as we lean into your heart to learn from you, Lord. In Jesus' name, I pray, amen. Amen. Okay. So, we've learned about praise in the last two classes extensively in a quite detailed manner about the origins of praise, the origin of, sorry, sorry. The volume is less. Okay. Please increase the volume. Is my audio okay for those online? Are you able to hear me? Okay. All right. Great. Awesome. Thank you. So, in the previous classes, we learned about the foundations of praise, the power of praise, and many expressions of how you can express your praise and your worship. Okay. What we'll do now, we'll continue into chapter five. We're going to chapter five and start understanding what is worship. In the very first chapter, we've looked at different definitions of what worship is. But in this chapter, chapter five, just like what we did in chapter three and chapter four, we'll try and go a little bit more deeper and to understand what is worship. Okay. So, these are very basic fundamental information, I would say. So, make sure you understand what's being taught. And if you have not understood anything, please again feel free to ask any questions. Okay. So, again, this is the basic fundamentals of what worship is. So, if you look into your notes, the dictionary definition of what worship, it says intense love or admiration or a service showing reverence to express reverence, to have a sense of awe to bow low. Okay. Those are all dictionary definition. If you have a dictionary, if you go to the word worship, you will find those definitions and then you can compare it to any language that you're comfortable with. But I have shared this briefly, right? The word worship comes from the word, okay, write it down, two words, right? Worthship. It comes from a very old Latin word called worthship. Okay. Yogi. Okay, that's worthy, isn't it? So, if you say that you are worshiping Jesus, that means you are saying, I'm giving my love, my affection, my devotion, all my adoration because he is worthy. Right? Because he is worthy, right? Yogi. Sorry, I'll keep saying that. Okay, so that's what worship actually is, is you have recognized that Jesus is worthy of your love, is worthy of your worship, and that is why you worship him. Okay. This point might be a little too advanced, as in too early to share, but without a revelation of the worthiness of Jesus, you cannot worship him. I'll say that one more time. If you have not had a revelation of the worthiness of who Jesus is, we cannot really worship him. Are you with me? And so, we will learn more about it as we go ahead. Okay, so, but let's not jump ahead. Okay. So, the thing about worship is, at least in our culture, in Indian culture is that everybody loves to worship, isn't it? We all love to worship something. We either love some, worship something or someone. The thing about the Indian culture is that there is a very thin line, a very thin line between honor and worship. Honor is what? You honor your father and your mother, right? You honor your friends. That's what we are commanded to do, isn't it? Honor your elders, you know, treat everyone with respect and all of that. But the line between honor and worship seems to be so thin in our culture, what we happen to do is we think we are honoring an individual, but what we end up doing most of the times is we worship that individual. Are you with me? Okay. So, it's very important that we know the difference between honor and worship. Okay. You can go back and just do a word study on the difference between what is honor and what is worship. We will not do that now. But the point is we were created to worship. Okay. We were, you and I, we were made to worship because we were made to worship anything that seems superior to us, we tend to worship, right? Anything, I don't know. For example, we know Sachin Tendulkar, he has a title called The God of Cricket, right? Oh, he's amazing at cricket. Why, what do we do? We worship, we give him the title God. Are you with me? Right. So, anything we, you know, we feel as humans, which is superior, like anything that is, you know, is like a Superman or a super strength or super power, we immediately worship, right? Some cultures worship the sun, the moon, the stars, the waters, the rivers. Right. My point is because you and I were made for worship, we tend to worship anything or anyone. Okay. Now, I'm not only talking about, necessarily say statues or idols. If, and I'll share this story very briefly, in 2016, okay. How many of you play guitar? Okay. One person. Okay. So I have this dream guitar, right? Every musician, if you're an artist, you have this, no, if you're a techie, you know, I have, that's my dream computer, that's my dream instrument, right? So I'm a musician. I have a dream guitar, right? An acoustic guitar. But the problem is that acoustic guitar is very expensive, very, very expensive. But I remember in the year 2016, okay, for out of the 12 months in that year, right? Out of the 12 months in that year, at least nine months, I would have given all my affection, all my devotion, all my energy, all my time researching about this guitar. What happened? I gave a thing, you know, a guitar, all my time, all my energy, all my thinking. From the time I would wake up until the time I would go to sleep, I would annoy everybody around me. This is my dream guitar. This is my dream guitar. This is my dream guitar. This is my dream guitar. My wife was very angry and upset. Like, can you really stop talking about this guitar? So I did that for nine months, so nine months in that year, out of 12 months. And God in His grace and in His mercy, He gives a gentle, what are you doing? Is you can idolize anything you want to. You can idolize anything or anyone. Any, if anyone receives all your affection, all your devotion, right, everything, that person becomes the recipient of your worship. Instagram. Are you not on Instagram, Pastor? I don't, I don't look at it at all. You see, my display picture is also empty. Nothing, right? I'm just giving examples. I hope you realize it, right? During my day and age, I am so bored of social media right now. I am on Instagram simply because I have to promote my wife's baking page. Okay, I have to like all the cakes she puts up. I hope she doesn't see this. But otherwise, I just feel it's too crowded, but I'm not a huge fan. But then going back to 2009, 2010, that's when Facebook was a big thing, right? When Facebook was not about marketing, it was genuinely about connecting people. But remember, I remember back then, when my generation was kind of addicted to Facebook, like from the time they would think they would think about the post, their photos, everything. So again, I want us to come to that root point and be very careful that anything, okay, anything or anyone can easily become a recipient of your worship if you are not careful. Are you with me? Right? For me, in 2016, it was the guitar. The guitar. All my reasons were genuine. Why do you want that guitar? No, I want the best instrument to worship God. You see how I could manipulate something? Like, you know, for my selfish reason, for my selfish desires, I wanted to use worship and God to get what I wanted. Was that right? You can say I'm wrong. Was I right? No, I know I was wrong. Okay. So worship is so powerful. Worship is beautiful when you have the revelation of the one who is actually worthy. Right? And I keep saying this that heaven, all of heaven, the angels, the elders, they have only one reason. They have only one reason. And that is that he is worthy. Right? In Revelation 4 and 5, when you read John, the Apostle John, he is, you know, he's weeping because no one is worthy to open the scroll. Right? And then that one of the elders say, why are you weeping? You know, for the Lion of the tribe of Judah has triumphed. He is worthy to open the scroll. So everything, the song, there are seven songs in the book of Revelation, seven hymns. All of it revolves around this thing called worthy, that this God, he is worthy. Okay? So even before we dive any deeper, I will make this point once again. You and I cannot worship if we do not have a revelation of his worth. And out of that revelation, we get, okay, you know, what was the revelation of his worthiness that the elders had? He is the lamb who was slain for the sins of the world. He has redeemed us. Right? And so if we don't have the revelation of his worthiness, that means you do not understand that you've been saved or redeemed. And if you don't understand that you've been saved or redeemed, you will not feel the need to be thankful or grateful. And if you are not thankful or grateful, you will not worship. You will only be singing songs, making noise. Are you with me? Okay. So everything about worship is connected to the revelation of who Jesus Christ is. Alive? Are you alive? Awake? Okay. All right, Daniel. Okay, the guitar is called the McPherson guitar. McPherson. Don't judge me. But it costs about 10 lakhs. Okay, so don't judge. All right, there's a question. How did David being a shepherd boy had that much of deep understanding about praise and worship? David being a shepherd boy have that much of an understanding or deep understanding about praise and worship? I think that's a lovely question, Sunny. But I think if you don't mind, can I address it in the stream section? I will kind of type an answer to that question. Because it's a wonderful question. I might take an entire hour to just respond to that to talk about David. Okay, so I hope that's okay. Okay, so let's... All of you are with me so far? Yes? Okay, thank you. Okay, so let's begin with addressing... I want to share, I think, four or five points on what is worship. So the first thing is worship is the recognition of who God is. Okay, worship is the recognition of who God is. So what do you mean by recognizing something? What do you mean by recognition? Sorry? Realize? Okay, sorry. Acknowledgement? Yeah, acknowledgement. So again, what is acknowledgement? Everybody say acknowledge? Okay, you know what you just did? You acknowledged my question and you responded. Yes? If you did not acknowledge me, that means he's talking. That's what you would have done. So everybody say recognize. One more time. So when we say worship is recognizing who God is. What does that mean? Sorry? Being aware? Okay, being aware of who he is? Sorry? Do you think something, Akul? Okay, you know... Okay, right. First, relating to the presence of God. Okay, all right, relating to the presence of God. Thank you. Okay, how many of you can recognize your best friend's voice or your mother's voice or your father's voice? You understood? No. Is this a safe question to ask? How many of you recognize your mother's voice or your father's voice or your best friend? Okay, so you're recognized. Rina? Keep smiling, Rina. Okay. So it's as simple as that. So when you call someone, if they call from an unknown number, you know it's like, okay, it's this person who is calling. What's happened is you have recognized that person, isn't it? Now, out of when you recognize, two things can happen. So when recognizing, that means you are identifying, okay, this is this person's voice. Okay, so Joseph calls me. It's like, if he calls, I don't have his number saved. If he calls, and if I'm his best friend, I know, okay, hey, Joseph, that means I have identified his voice. Yes or no? Yeah, so one thing, first thing what happens is you identify who the person is. Second thing is then you acknowledge, right? Then I say, okay, once I have identified, okay, this is Joseph's voice, then I will acknowledge him by saying, hey, Joseph, okay. Now most of the times, not most of the times, I'm sorry, sometimes when you identify something or someone, you don't necessarily want to acknowledge. What do I mean by that? So you go to a mall, a shopping mall. Yeah, how many of you have gone to a mall? Okay, there are a lot of malls in Bangalore. Okay, if you want to waste your time, please go. So you go to a mall. From far you see a person that you can recognize and then you can identify. So from far I can see Sunny. I have identified Sunny. Yeah, from far, but he hasn't seen me, right? But I don't like Sunny. So I can try everything in my power to hide. I don't want to acknowledge him. I hope he doesn't see me, cover my shirt, hoodie around or sweatshirt. So with acknowledging or identifying, you will either want to acknowledge or not acknowledge. Are you with me? So there is power in recognizing and identifying who God is. Are you with me? So here's a simple example. So I have two sons now. But when my first son was born, his name is Ethan. So I have known Ethan from the time he was conceived. That means from the time he was this big in the mother's womb, like you know, like on dot for like, I don't know, you know, one full year, I know, I know that he is my son. Right? I know that he is my son. My day changed when he could recognize and say, dada. Right? What happened is the son could recognize my voice, my presence or who I am understood. And so it's the same way the father takes our father in heaven takes great delight when we can recognize who he is. Okay, let's go to John chapter 21. Okay. I hope you're with me to John chapter 21. Okay, John chapter 21 verse one onwards. It says, after these things, Jesus showed himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberius. And in this way, he showed himself. Simon Peter, Thomas called the twin Nathaniel of Canna in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples were together. Simon Peter said to them, I am going fishing. They said to him, we are going with you also. They went out and immediately got into the boat and that night they caught nothing. But when the morning had come now, Jesus stood on the shore. Yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Then Jesus said to them, children, have you any food? They answered him, no. And he said to them, cast the net on the right side of the boat and you will find some. So they cast. And now they were not able to draw it in because of the multitude of fish. Verse seven, therefore, that disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, it is the Lord. Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment for he had removed it and plunged it into the sea. Okay, I love this chapter. Does anybody else love it? So it was happening yet. Thank you, Gophe. So what's happening is, according to the disciples in this chapter, the one that they have given their three years of their life to, they've seen their master, their rabbi, their teacher being crucified and buried. So in their head, that Jesus is crucified, he's dead and gone. And you can imagine that you've spent, say, three and a half years with someone. You've walked with them. You've seen the miracles that he's done. Okay, he's taught you. And suddenly he is gone. And so the disciples are all depressed. Right, they are very sad. They don't know what to do because their teacher is gone. What do we do now? Our teacher is gone. He's gone. Have you made wrong decisions when you are sad? Or is it just me? I've made terrible choices when I'm sad or angry. Peter was very sad. He was very depressed. And so Peter says, I'll go do what I know to do best. I am going fishing. Okay, fine. Peter is going fishing, I understand. What is the taxpayer have to do with fishing? He said, you're going fishing. I'm also coming. You want to jump off the cliff? I'll also come. You know? So I know I can understand why Peter is going fishing, because that's what he used to do. I don't know about everybody else. So Peter said to them, I'm going fishing. Let's fast forward. And then Jesus comes into the scene. He's standing by the shore. What does he tell them? Have you caught any fish? He is talking. You would realize, you would hope that disciples could recognize his voice, but they don't. They don't recognize the voice of the one they've walked with for so long, spent so much of time with him. Heard him speak, sermon on the mount. Each, the Lord's prayer and so many things. They did life with this person for three and a half years. And it is the same person who's calling out, have you caught any fish? They don't recognize. You see where we're going with this? Okay. Children, have you any food? They answered him no. There's no recognition. That means there's no identifying. There is no acknowledgement. And he's continuing to talk to them in verse six. He says, cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some. By now, you would think, hey, that's Jesus' voice. You would think everybody shouted, hey, that's Jesus. Nothing happens. Jesus said, cast the net on the right side of the boat. They don't even say anything, question or, you know, somebody's like, cast the right. Okay, guys, this is cast, cast the net on the right side. There's no acknowledgement, recognition, nothing. Verse seven, John, he says to Peter, they're putting the net on the right side. They're pulling. They're not able to pull in the fish. And John has a moment like the light bulb moment. Wait a second. I know that voice. I recognize that voice. He says to Peter, Peter, Peter, it is the Lord. You see out of the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, only John talks about worship in John chapter four. You know why? Because I believe that John was a worshipper. He would always rest on the bosom of Jesus. He would always want to be intimate, in communion. Jesus didn't love any other disciples less. He loved everybody the same. But he wanted to be next to Jesus. He wanted to rest on his chest. Out of the four gospels, only the one gospel talks about worship. That is the gospel of John. Because I believe that John was a worshipper. John was a worshipper. But here it is something. You need a worshipper to help you recognize who Jesus is. Why? Because John says, Peter, it's Jesus. It is the Lord. How does Peter respond? Peter doesn't say, loser, what's wrong with you? He's dead in his body. We are in the middle. Just catch the fish. Peter doesn't question. He doesn't think. He doesn't think twice. There's no logic that's going through. You see, logic will stop you from worshiping truly. What does he do? John would not have even finished the sentence. He puts on the garment. He dumps into the water and swims towards Jesus. It's the beauty of recognizing who Jesus is. It's not enough that you just recognize him. It's not enough that you just identify him. It should draw you to him. Are you with me? You need people like John in your life who can recognize the presence. Only true worshipers can recognize the presence of Jesus. Right? As soon as you walk into a room of worship, you know, why do you put your hands up? Because you know that he is there. Isn't it? You know that he is there. And so you want to honor his presence. Peter jumped into the water and went towards him because he recognized because someone helped him recognize. And after he recognized who Jesus is, he didn't want to be where he was. He's like, Hey, Jesus, two minutes. I'm just pulling the fish. Let me come. You know, it's five minutes. He didn't care about the fish. So that tells us that Peter didn't go fishing to catch fish. Are you with me? So Peter didn't care about the fish. Jesus mattered to him. Everything seemed to be restored at that point. So that's the first well, I think we built in that point for a while. So first point is recognizing who God is. What is worship? It's very important for all of us to recognize who he is. The Bible tells us that he is majestic in a holiness. God is holy. He is wonderful. Song of Solomon says he's the fairest of 10,000. He's the lily of the valley. He's the rose of Sharon, right? He's the bright and morning star. All of that is recognizing who this beautiful, beautiful Jesus is. The question to you is, do you recognize his voice? Can you recognize Jesus is my question to you. Do you have that intimate relationship with Jesus where you can recognize his voice? Where you can differentiate between your own mind voice and his voice? Are you with me? Right? All of that is worship. Let's move on. Second point is worship is reverence for God. Worship is reverence for God. In your notes, there will be two scriptures, Psalm 5 verse 7. Psalm 5 verse 7. But as for me, I will come into your house in the multitude of your mercy. In fear of you, I will worship towards your holy temple. Psalm 96 verse 9. Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of his holiness. Tremble before him all the earth. So, what this point is saying is we cannot come into his presence with an attitude of don't care, right? If you were in the presence of a king or any earthly king or a prime minister or the president, when you enter into the room where the president or the prime minister is, you are not going to, you know, just open up the buttons and it's like, so yeah, how's it going? I don't know what will happen. But worship has to draw you into a place of reverence. It's not enough where you just recognize him, but you are aware of who this God is, right? He is the Alpha and the Omega. He is the beginning and the end. He is the great I am. He is not one God among the crores of God. He is God all by himself, right? Nobody had to vote for him to become God, right? Even before time began, he is God. We cannot treat him like he's some small thing or whatever. We cannot come into his presence without reverence. Honoring in reverence, just being aware of his constant presence is worship. One of the greatest examples, I will never forget this, is Jesus being the very Son of God. You know, everything he did on earth, he did it with the power of the Holy Spirit. Okay, the Bible says when Jesus was baptized, right, the heavens was torn apart, the Holy Spirit descended on him in the form of a dove and rested on him, right? The Holy Spirit came in the form of a dove and rested on him. Now, imagine you have a dove on your shoulders and you never want the dove to leave you. You like the presence of that dove on you. I'm not going to be jumping around. I'm not going to speak loudly or do anything that will scare the dove away. Are you with me? Everything I do, everything I say will be mindful of this dove on my shoulder because I do not want this dove to leave me. Are you with me? That is walking in reverence. That is worship. You are constantly aware of his presence. Amen. Right, so that's the second point. What is worship? Worship is reverence for God. It's simply being aware of his presence. Okay, and the third thing, third point in the notes is it is communion with God. It is communion with God. It simply means intimacy with God. I want us to read a few scriptures very quickly. Let's see if I can read it for us. Does anybody have the Bible with you? You have the Bible with you? Okay, Mike. Okay, Matthew chapter 22. You can write it down if you want to. Matthew 22 verse 36 to 40. And someone else can read Mark chapter 12 verse 28 to 31. Mark 12 verse 28 to 31. And finally, Luke chapter 10 verse 25 to 28. Is that too much? Okay, let's start with Matthew chapter 22. Matthew 22 verse 36 to 40. Matthew chapter 22 verse 36. Teacher, which is great commandment in the Lord, Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord, you shall your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments have all the law on the prophets. While the praises were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, what do you think about the Christ who Son is? They said to him, the Son of David. Thanks. So, right. You were in which verse? 42. Okay, we stop at 40. Okay, thank you. So I gave you three scriptures, right? You can just make a note of it. Matthew 22, 36 to 40. Mark chapter 12 was 28 to 31. And Luke chapter 10 was 25 to 28. Now, because of time, I'm just going to go through this. So all of this scripture says, it says, the first commandment is love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And then love your neighbor as yourself. Okay. I stressed on this at the beginning of this class saying that you and I were made for worship, made to worship him. And all these scriptures say the same thing. Love your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Okay. So we were made to be in communion with God. Okay. So the result of communion is holiness. Everybody say holiness. Okay. So holiness is not a result of cosmetics. Okay. Holiness is not a result of cosmetic. That means you can't put on some makeup and say you're holy. Okay. For example, you can't put on white shirt, white pant and say you're holy. It's like, I don't want to say anything. You know, you grow a little beard, unholy. You don't shave every day, unholy. You know, put on some jewelry, unholy. You don't know jewelry. Very holy. Right. Forget about tattoos. Piercing. No boy. Okay. Holiness is not a result of cosmetics. It's a result of communion and intimacy. Okay. I want you to write down this word intimacy. Write it down. Intimacy. I N T I M A C Y intimacy. Okay. Actually, I think I'll need the board hold on one moment. I'll probably end the class with this. So you have the word intimacy. This is another word for communion. Okay. So with intimacy or with communion, the result of that is holiness. This is one word, right? Intimacy. Now, you can break this word down, right? Is N to me, you see. Okay. That's because I show you. Okay. Intimacy, if you break it down, it simply means into me, you see, because I show you. Now, if I say that I have an intimate relationship with my father, that means that he's revealed things to me, that he's shown me the things that he has not shown anybody else. Are you with me? Right. So when you have intimate relationship with Jesus, he will show you things that he has not shared with anybody else. That's exactly what he wants to do with you. All he's saying is, come spend time with me. Communion with me. Let's have come in unity. Let's come together in unity. Right. And so this is also worship. What is worship? The third point, it is communion with Lord, communion, communicating with God. All good so far. Yes. Thumbs up, thumbs down. Both the thumbs up. Okay. All right. I think I'll stop here and we'll not get into the next point. We'll stop here and we'll resume next week where we left. Okay. So the first three points that we covered today, what is worship? Worship is recognizing who God is. Second, worship is reverence for God. Third, worship is communion with God, having an intimate relationship with our Lord. Okay. Awesome. Thanks for joining in. God bless you. I'll see you next week. Thanks guys. Thank you very much, sir.