Worship Must Be Continual | Pastor Jonathan Phillips

"God is bigger than language and he's bigger than music. Then worship is more than a song." — Pastor Jonathan Phillips

Most people would say worship ends when the song does. When the lights come up and the band walks off the stage, worship is over and the rest of life begins. But in week four of The Tree Church's worship series, Pastor Jonathan Phillips made a case that challenges that assumption at its foundation.

Worship does not end when the song ends. It was never supposed to.

Pastor Jonathan opened in Revelation 22:8–9, where John the Revelator falls at the feet of an angel after receiving an extraordinary vision. The angel stops him immediately. "Don't do that," the angel says. "Worship God." Pastor Jonathan pointed out that this is not a suggestion or an invitation. It is a command. And notably, it comes without conditions attached.

Not worship God when the atmosphere is right. Not worship God when the band plays your song. Just worship God.

That command became the anchor for everything that followed.

Before walking the congregation through what a worship life looks like, Pastor Jonathan wanted to address the why behind it. He turned to Isaiah 42:8, a verse he first encountered as a sophomore in college.

"I am the Lord. That is my name. I will not give my glory to anyone else nor share my praise with carved idols."

That verse, he explained, set the direction of his life. God is passionate about his own glory. He will not share it. And when Pastor Jonathan saw that, he realized there were only two options. He could spend his life trying to make it about himself, or he could get in line with the heart of God and give his life to helping others see how much God is worth.

That became his mission. To help the world see what he is worth.

God does not need our worship. Pastor Jonathan was clear about that. God exists apart from everything. He cannot be added to or subtracted from. But he wants us to see his worth because he sees it. And a good God who wants his people to experience something that boundless must be doing it for their good.

Pastor Jonathan built toward one of the central ideas of the message by first exploring why worship through song matters so much. Psalm 66:2 and 4 call the people of God to sing the glory of his name. Scripture is filled with commands to sing, to make music, to speak to one another in hymns and spiritual songs.

There is a reason for that. Music communicates beyond language. It reaches places that words alone cannot.

To illustrate the point, Pastor Jonathan wrote a country song live in the room with the congregation's help, pulling themes and words from the audience and turning them into a full chorus on the spot. The room sang along almost instinctively.

That, he said, is exactly the point. Music moves people in ways that language cannot always explain.

But here is where the message sharpened. If God is beyond language, and music can go further than language, God is also beyond music. Which means worship itself must be more than a song. Colossians 3:17 captures this well. Whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father. Paul takes worship completely out of a single moment and places it into the context of an entire life.

Pastor Jonathan then walked through three arenas where a worship life actually takes place, drawing from Psalm 66 throughout.

The first is the extraordinary. Psalm 66:2–3 calls the people of God to make his praise glorious, to say to God how awesome his deeds are. Pastor Jonathan illustrated this with a series of images and facts designed to stir a sense of awe.

A tornado tearing through a neighborhood like paper. Mount Everest, the highest peak in the world, visible for 230 miles from its summit, and yet invisible from a photo taken near Saturn's rings. The sun, burning at 27 million degrees Fahrenheit, felt from 93 million miles away. The mantis shrimp, four inches long, capable of striking with the force of a 22 caliber bullet fast enough to punch 437 times in the span of a single blink.

Each of these things reveals something about God. His power. His creativity. His attention to detail. His mystery. When we encounter the extraordinary and recognize God in it, that recognition and response is worship.

The second arena is one that often gets overlooked. A worship life happens in the mundane.

Psalm 66:15 describes offerings of bulls and rams, a ritual that was routine, repeated, and anything but glamorous. Pastor Jonathan used his own marriage proposal to Natalie as a contrast. The proposal was extraordinary by any measure. Rose petals, candles, a message in a bottle, a letter written the day he knew he would marry her. Tears, joy, and his sister doing laps around the park in her car to catch the moment on video.

But marriage is not made of proposals. It is made of laundry days and gym sessions and holding someone's hair back when they are sick.

Worship works the same way. A worship life is not built only on the mountain top moments. It is built in the 3:00 a.m. diaper change. The morning commute. The first bite of a perfectly cooked steak. The DQ Blizzard a neighbor drops off. The feeling of sliding your feet under the covers at the end of a long day.

Pastor Jonathan pointed out that God gave human beings the ability to enjoy every one of those moments. He gave us taste buds when he could have made everything taste like unsweetened oatmeal. He gave us color when he could have made the world grayscale. He gave us the ability to smell a watermelon cracked open in the summer. All of it was created for our delight, so that our delight would point us back to him.

And beyond creating those moments, Jesus purchased our right to enjoy them through his death on the cross. We were enemies of God, and he sent his son to pay for our place in this world and our ability to bring him glory in it.

The third arena is the hardest. A worship life happens in the pain.

Psalm 66 does not shy away from this. Verse 12 acknowledges going through fire and water. Verses 17 and 19 describe crying out to God in trouble, praising him even as the cries came. The NLT captures it this way: "For I cried out to him for help, praising him as I spoke."
Pastor Jonathan paused on that tension. How does someone cry out for help and praise at the same time? Because worship does not originate on the lips. It originates in the heart. Jesus said it plainly. Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. When praise is what lives in the heart, it finds its way out even through tears and cries for help.

"It is one thing to see God in beauty and even to see him in the mundane, but it is a whole different level of maturity found in those who continue responding to him in the pain."
 — Pastor Jonathan Phillips

Pain is not a reason to stop worshiping. Pain does not have the authority to decide whether God is worthy. Pastor Jonathan was careful not to minimize what people carry. He was not saying that pain is something to celebrate or rush through. He was saying that worship gives pain a purpose.

When the prayer is not answered the way you hoped. When the relationship breaks. When the doctor says cancer. When someone you love is gone. In those moments, a worship life says: God, get glory in my hurt.

That posture, Pastor Jonathan said, is one of the most Christlike things a person can do. Jesus endured the greatest suffering this world has ever seen. And from the greatest pain came the greatest act of worship this world has ever seen.

Pastor Jonathan closed by calling the church to something specific. Not a Sunday kind of worship. A Monday kind of worship. A Tuesday kind of worship. Worship that does not need to be warmed up because it never actually stopped.

He described a vision for what it could look like if Sunday morning was simply the overflow of what had already been happening in the heart all week. No need for a strong opener to get people in the room. They would already be there.

That is what a worship life produces. In the extraordinary moments, you worship. In the mundane moments, you worship. In the painful moments, you worship. Not because it always feels right, but because God is always worth it.

The Tree Church gathers every Sunday at 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM across two Ohio campuses.

If you are looking for a church in Lancaster, Ohio, join us at our Lancaster campus at 721 N. Memorial Drive, Lancaster, OH 43130.

If you are looking for a church in Logan, Ohio, our Logan campus is located at 36 Hocking Mall, Logan, OH 43138.

We would love to have you join us this Sunday.