Facing Prometheus — Week 28 (The Mysterion) | “Worship As Warfare” | Pastor Jason Parrish
About the series: We’re currently in Facing Prometheus: A Letter to the Ephesians and the Future Church Dilemma, a 48-week look at how Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus can transform our lives. For more on what the series is about, watch the prequel message here.
Last week the series pulled back the curtain on the spiritual, contested nature of everyday life. This week Pastor Jason stays in the same territory but comes at it from an unexpected angle: worship. When we read “be strengthened by the Lord and by his vast strength,” most of us don’t think of worship. We think practically, of strength as something given or received. And when we think of worship, we tend to think one-dimensionally too: songs, singing, music, reverence. All true, but only part of the picture.
In Week 28 of Facing Prometheus: A Letter to the Ephesians and the Future Church Dilemma, Pastor Jason reorients our understanding of worship by showing the role it plays in spiritual warfare. The argument, worked out through two truths and a correction, is that worship is not a lever we pull to win a battle. It is warfare itself, and it reorients our entire interaction with God when the fight comes.
The Text — Ephesians 6:10
“Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by his vast strength.”
— Ephesians 6:10 (CSB)
Reorienting Worship
Grant Osborne points out that “be strong” here is a present passive imperative. God must be the source, and his input has to be ongoing; if we’re going to be victorious in our walk, we cannot stop relying on him and receiving his mighty power. Notice the order: strength in Christ comes before the armor is ever put on. Something is happening in spiritual warfare even before we take up the armor to stand and fight.
That something is worship. Textually, the reception of strength is passive, and the putting on of the armor is active. In other words, our worship is a posture of receiving strength; it is not a posture of strength. Many of us carry the opposite assumption, that we have to come in strong in order to worship. The Bible says the reverse.
★★ Our best worship comes from our greatest weakness.
Worship is the battle you engage in before you ever put on the armor. And the armor is heavy; putting it on means you’re about to step into the fight. The problem many of us have is that we’re trying to put on armor for a battle we have no strength to be in. When strength is received, we are then able, actively, to take up the armor of God. Worship and spiritual warfare are not two separate things. Worship is part of the warfare, and seeing that reorients everything.
1. Worship Repositions the Battles We Face
In 2 Chronicles 20, the Moabites, Ammonites, and Meunites come against King Jehoshaphat. The threat is real, a vast army already at En-gedi, and Jehoshaphat is afraid. His first move is to seek the Lord and proclaim a fast for all Judah.
★★ We can’t face battles that we won’t admit are there in the first place.
Jehoshaphat then prays publicly, and his prayer admits not only the battle but their inability to fight it:
2 Chronicles 20:12 (ESV) — O our God, will you not execute judgment on them? For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.
The greatest danger we face in spiritual battles is believing we can fight and win them without the power and help of the Lord. Jehoshaphat does the opposite: “we do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” As Osborne puts it, the key to victory in the cosmic battle is spiritual strength, and many of the church’s problems come from finite, fallible people trying to engage the enemy in their own inadequate strength. This ties directly to last week: it takes spiritual eyes to actually see what is taking place, and believing is not the same as seeing.
God answers through a worshiper. The Spirit comes on Jahaziel, a Levite from Asaph’s descendants, in the middle of the congregation:
2 Chronicles 20:15, 17 (CSB) — Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast number, for the battle is not yours, but God’s… You do not have to fight this battle. Position yourselves, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord.
Two things are worth noticing. First, this declaration happens in the assembly, amid the congregation. Both private worship and congregational worship matter, and God designed them to be different. Second, worship here is not just singing; it’s a prophetic declaration. The Spirit comes on a worship leader to remind everyone that the battle isn’t theirs and that they are to take their positions and stand firm. That is the same “stand firm” language Paul uses in Ephesians 6. It’s battle-repositioning language.
There’s a trap in this passage, though, and it’s how many people read it: the worshipers sang, the enemy was defeated, so we just have to worship, sing hard enough, and the battle will be won. That turns worship into a lever, and it makes the battle about our ability to perform. Worship becomes performative, ritualistic, scripted, and religious. But Jahaziel says the battle is the Lord’s.
★★★ We are to worship the Lord of the battle, not for the outcome of the battle.
So Jehoshaphat bows to the ground, the people worship, and he appoints singers to go out ahead of the army, praising in holy attire: “Give thanks to the Lord, for his faithful love endures forever.”
★★ This is liturgy, not strategy.
Both the content and the expression of worship matter, and we shouldn’t pit them against each other. And notice what they sang:
★★ They did not sing at the enemy. They sang about God’s character. It was a confession of God’s covenant faithfulness, sung by people who had just admitted they had no idea what to do. Worship is not aggressive speech aimed outward. It is a confession of who God is, sung and declared even when we are in the dark.
Then, the moment they began to sing and praise, the Lord set an ambush, and the enemy armies turned on and destroyed each other. Judah spent three days simply gathering the plunder, gathered in the Valley of Beracah (blessing) to bless the Lord, and returned to Jerusalem with harps, lyres, and trumpets. Worship, then battle, then worship. Worship became the two bookends around the whole thing.
★★★ Worship is warfare, even before the battle begins, and worship should always be the result at the end of it.
Theologically, the ultimate battle will be won by Christ (Revelation). So when cancer steals a life, a car accident alters a family, addiction creates a prodigal, a job is lost, or a marriage ends, it does not mean God has lost or that you have lost. It’s a reminder that we are in a battle, and worship, even there, reorients how we understand the fight.
2. How You Worship Before a Battle Tells You How You’ll Worship In a Battle
Put another way: how you worship on an ordinary Sunday is how you will worship on the worst Tuesday of your life. The second king, Hezekiah, shows us this. He became king at twenty-five, did what was right in the Lord’s sight, and in the first month of his reign reopened and repaired the temple doors that the previous king, Ahaz, had shut.
Between Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles 20 and Hezekiah in 2 Chronicles 29 lies roughly 130 to 140 years and the reigns of Jehoram, Ahaziah, Joash, Amaziah, Uzziah, Jotham, and Ahaz, nearly a century and a half of reform alternating with apostasy.
★★ That chronological distance shows how consistently God responded to faithful prayer and worship across generations, despite the lapsing centuries and changing circumstances.
Under Hezekiah, massive reform unfolds. The Levites are stationed with instruments as David commanded, the song of the Lord begins with the burnt offering and sounding trumpets (ch. 29), the Passover is observed (ch. 30), and the high places are removed and the priestly courses reorganized (ch. 31). It was a spiritual golden hour. And then:
2 Chronicles 32:1 (CSB) — After Hezekiah’s faithful deeds, King Sennacherib of Assyria came and entered Judah. He laid siege to the fortified cities and intended to break into them.
The most thorough worship restoration in all of Chronicles is followed immediately by the largest invasion in Judah’s history. Worship did not prevent the attack. This guards us against a broken theology that says if we do this, then God must do that. Worship is not a force field. Faithful worship and severe assault are not mutually exclusive. Yet watch Hezekiah in the middle of it:
2 Chronicles 32:7–8 (ESV) — Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or dismayed before the king of Assyria and all the horde that is with him, for there are more with us than with him. With him is an arm of flesh, but with us is the Lord our God, to help us and to fight our battles.
Faithful worship did not exempt Hezekiah from invasion, and it will not exempt any of us. That is not a defect in God’s promises or character; it’s that the enemy is always at work.
★★★ Jehoshaphat shows us what worship does in the battle. Hezekiah shows us what worship does before the battle.
3. The Correction: How You Treat Another’s Worship Reveals a Lot About Your Own
Mark 10:46–52 (CSB) (excerpt) — Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the road. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many warned him to keep quiet, but he was crying out all the more… Jesus stopped and said, “Call him”… “Go, your faith has saved you.” Immediately he could see and began to follow Jesus on the road.
There is a lot of conversation around worship right now. What is worship and what isn’t? Loud or quiet? Lights, screens, and a band, or a single acoustic guitar? Scripture only, or is there room for metaphor, poetry, and creativity? Emotive or stoic? Stages or flat ground? Whole corners of TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and the blog world are devoted to calling out, critiquing, shaming, and judging the worship of other believers.
Some frame it as protection, keeping worship holy, pure, and doctrinally correct. But here’s the problem: God never asked us to gatekeep someone’s worship of him. When we do it, we’re judging someone’s heart based on an external detail we simply don’t prefer. Look at the Bartimaeus scene: the crowd warned the blind man to keep quiet, and Jesus stopped to receive the very cry they were trying to silence. Jesus never told him, “next time, tone it down.” He received a desperate man who simply wanted to see.
★★ May we never be the church that critiques another’s worship because they’re blind and they want to see.
Real worship in the middle of a battle is rarely polished. If someone broke into your house, it would look nothing like the composed scene you’ve played out in your head; you’d be scrambling. So it is with worship in crisis. And yet we judge the desperate cry of another for not looking the way we prefer. There is no decorum when it comes to swinging a sword.
★★ Want to know what will mess you up in spiritual warfare? Get critical. God never asked us to gatekeep another person’s worship. This has to stop, and the way it stops is by realizing that worship is warfare.
Closing
Two truths and a correction. Worship repositions the spiritual battles we face. How you worship before a battle tells you how you’ll worship in it, and if you can’t do it here, what makes you think you’ll be able to do it there? And how you treat another’s worship reveals a lot about your own. Underneath all three is the truth Pastor Jason opened with: worship is a posture of receiving God’s strength, not a display of our own. It is a confession of who God is, sung in the dark by people who have admitted they don’t know what to do, and it is the bookend on both sides of every fight.That’s part of why worship at The Well looks the way it does. Some of it is loud, with a band and screens, as people bow, kneel, jump, and shout. Some of it is quiet and reverent, clapping, singing, weeping. We use every faculty we have to worship the God who created all of them to be used for exactly that. The point is not that loud is the right way or that quiet is the right way. The point is that we will never rob someone of a moment to cry out to God, and we will never be the church that critiques another believer’s worship for needing their eyes opened. Worship is warfare.
