Prayer of Faith (James 5:13-20)
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
“More Power” (Tim the Tool Man Taylor grunt)
This phrase became popular, thanks to the show Home Improvement which began in 1991 and ran until 1999.
For Tim, the Toolman Taylor, he always wanted more power. More power on a weed wacker, more power on a lawn mower, more power on a chain saw. More power on a boat engine. More power on the garbage disposal. More power on the car engine. More power, well on anything he could. For Tim Taylor, nothing could have enough power.
What about for us though? Do we think there is a need for more power? I’m sure there are certain things we certainly would like a bit more power on too. Especially on those snow blowers as winter is knocking at the door.
But what if I was to tell you that there are two powerful tools that we often forget and neglect in our Christian lives? Tools that are at our disposal to use with great power!
Tools that would even grab Tim the Toolman Taylor’s attention. That’s what we want to talk about his morning in our message from James 5:13-20.
You can find the text on page #1202 in the Red Pew Bible in front of you.
We come this morning to the conclusion of James’ letter to the twelve tribes who are in the dispersion. Throughout the letter, James has been pushing his audience towards what it looks like to be spiritually whole, and not just hearers of this word, but doers of the word. To be doers who are not partial, who control their tongue, who are humble and submit themselves to God. Those who endure suffering with patience.
But in all of this, the means to it have at times been difficult to figure out how. But now, in closing, James gives us two most powerful tools to help us press towards spiritual wholeness as we set our eyes on Jesus. Here what they are here in our text, James 5:13-20.
Main Idea: Whether we are in the midst of sorrows or joy, our Heavenly Father has given us two powerful tools to help us as we pursue spiritual wholeness: prayer and one another.
We are going to unfold this in 2 points: (1) Prayer and (2) One Another.
Point #1: Prayer
Point #1: Prayer
13 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.
Whatever end of the spectrum that we find ourselves this morning, whether in the midst of suffering or in the midst of cheerfulness, we are called to pray.
In fact, we could say that all of the Christian life is to be filled with prayer. And while this morning we might be tempted to think that there is surely more pressing matters to give our attention to, we should not overlook this most important matter. The matter of prayer.
It is to prayer that James turns in conclusion of a letter where he has challenged those who have been double-minded and struggling to be only hearers of God’s word.
It is to prayer that James turns as his original, target audience has been scattered in the dispersion and in the midst of various trials that are pressing against them. This is a group who has been afflicted.
Remember James 2:5–6 “5 Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court?”
James too has been calling this group to be warned about worldliness and false wisdom. Warnings about presumptive planning and patience in suffering.
In the midst of all of this, James urges them to pray. To pray in suffering and to pray songs of praise in the midst of cheerfulness.
Why prayer in the midst of all of these issues? Because prayer is the powerful tool and means that God has given us to help us in the midst of these struggles. A tool at our disposal if we will humble ourselves before the LORD and acknowledge our ongoing need for his aide.
Every instruction, every command throughout the book of James is not a mere checklist for us to do as Christians. James is a hard letter. It is full of challenging and difficult commands for us as Christians.
But here is the thing we must remember here, the very thing that James is pointing us to here with prayer, living out the Christian life is impossible within our own strength. But God does not leave us to our own strength, he invites us to humble ourselves before him and depend on him to continue to work in us through the power of his Spirit. A power that we tap into through dependent prayer.
Yet, too often in the midst of sorrow and suffering, we forget and ignore this great and powerful tool to commune with God.
Instead, our hearts enter a perpetual state of grumbling and complaining against God. Blaming him for our present circumstances.
Yes, the Sovereign LORD allows these, but he does not abandon us in the midst of our sufferings. And while we will certainly have many moments like the Psalmists, asking “Why O LORD?” “Where are you LORD?” “Will you remain silent, LORD?”
In the midst of these questions, we should give ourselves to prayer, moving from questions to trust in the LORD as we recall his goodness and his past acts of deliverance.
Prayer is a tool to remember our very good God and ask for him to be our refuge and strength in the midst of whatever is pressing in against us.
Unfortunately, in the midst of our sorrows and the midst of our joys, our hearts foolishly forget God and the gift of prayer he has given us.
John Calvin captures this struggle. He writes:
Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles Chapter 5
But such is the perverseness of men, that they cannot rejoice without forgetting God, and that when afflicted they are disheartened and driven to despair. We ought, then, to keep within due bounds, so that the joy, which usually makes us to forget God, may induce us to set forth the goodness of God, and that our sorrow may teach us to pray.
Whatever our circumstances, we need to see the importance to go to the LORD in prayer. When sick?
14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.
Here James calls for the sick to call upon the elders of the church to come to them and pray over them and anoint them with oil.
Now, there has been much debate over the 2,000 years of church history of how to take verse 14 here, especially in what follows.
15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
Sickness and sin here are being tied together, and then added in is the difficulty of anointing with oil and the saving the one who is sick and raising him up.
James here is using language interchangeably in discussing sickness and sin. This was not isolated to James, his older half-brother, Jesus, did the same.
5 And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
Jesus heals the paralytic of a physical disease and then says his sins are forgiven.
But while in this instance, James is using these interchangeably, we should not take from this that all sickness is a result of one’s personal sin. For that is not the presumption of the Bible as a whole.
Jesus’ disciples presumed this, and Jesus teaches them otherwise.
1 As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth.
2 And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3 Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.
Sin and sickness may go together, but this is not always the case.
Again, let us consider Job. Job lost everything and himself had his body touched, sores covering his body. Yet, this was not tied to Job and sin.
When it comes to sickness, we must never presume it to be the cause of personal sin. Sickness and disease are part of living in a fallen world that has been effected by the curse of sin and death.
Sickness and disease has entered into this world because of the fall. It’s effects are felt because sin entered the world.
Therefore one’s sickness and disease and physical alignments are not normally tied to their personal sin.
And while it is not the norm and should not be the presumption, there are at times a correlation. Such as here with James audience, and like the Corinthians in which Paul writes to.
28 Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
29 For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.
30 That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.
31 But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.
32 But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.
Personal sin can lead to sickness. And it seems from both James and 1 Corinthians, that this is particularly the case when division and disunity enter the church body.
This should be a good warning church, for us to strive for unity, lest the LORD begin to humble us with various sickness that brings us to our knees.
While this is possible, we must be cautious like James here to ever make a clear statement that one’s sickness is a result of personal sin. For James is careful to state, if he has commited sins, he will be forgiven.
Regardless though here of the specific correlation between personal sin and sickness, one thing is clear, there is a call to pray.
The sick therefore are to call on others, particularly that of the elders in James example to pray over them and anoint them to the LORD.
This anointing being a means of using olive oil to set them aside to the LORD, entrusting them to him in the midst of their sickness.
Again, here in this context, it seems to be referring to those who are sick due to sin with what follows.
16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.
Confession of sins to one another and healing would be important given the big picture of James letter, a group where partiality and the destructive use of the tongue were on display.
Confession to one another of those sins would be important, especially if their sickness was a result of these particular sins.
However, even if you take this as not part of an ongoing rhetoric that James is using, the call to be confessing sin is plain to us. There is a need to confess sin and not just to God, but to one another.
For our prayers will be hindered if confession of sin is not present. This goes for whether we are sick or not.
9 If one turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination.
As we turn to the LORD in prayer, we should regularly make sure part of our prayers is a time of confession of our sin.
Part of our humbling ourselves and casting our dependence on the LORD is to acknowledge our sin, our wrongdoing. Our disobedience to do the word that we have heard. And it is in this confession that healing comes. Spiritually for sure, for in confession of our sins, forgiveness comes.
But potentially in confessing our sins, physical healing may come too.
Again here, there is nuance and debate as to what this looks like. There also should be much caution.
There are false churches out there who try and exploit this passage. They make their ministry primarily about a physical healing ministry based off texts like this and those found in the gospels and Acts of healings. They claim if you just have enough faith, you will be healed from any sickness and disease and disconformity.
These churches have missed the boat and they are off their rockers. They are sick themselves.
James here is not advertising that the church should be full of healing ministries. James is calling for us here in James 5:14-15 in the midst of sickness, in the midst of sin to pray.
When we pray over the sick, when we confess sin, this is not a magic fix to cure all sickness and disease. Eventually, sooner or later, there will be a sickness or disease or old age that we will not recover from in this earthly body. Our bodies will give way and death will come.
This seems morbid, but it is the truth. We cannot miss again James point here. Prayer. Prayer that we will trust the LORD and be dependable on him. Prayer that we will humble ourselves to his very good plan and trust in his goodness.
Consider here the example of Elijah and the power of righteous prayer.
17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth.
18 Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.
This example comes from 1 Kings 17-18.
1 Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.”
Ahab was a wicked king who did not trust the LORD. Ahab instead led many in Israel to worship the false god of Baal. And this prayer to close the heavens from giving rain was to humble Ahab.
It is in the middle of this drought and withholding of rain that the more well known story regarding Elijah and Abab and the competing fires takes place.
Elijah calls those who worship Baal to build a fire pit and call upon to Baal to light it. Of course nothing happens. Then the same is done by Elijah, and he calls his opponents to even dump water on the built fire pit, and then prays to the LORD to light it. And the LORD does, proving he alone is God!
And then, after three years and six months, Elijah prays and the heavens open up and give rain.
Through Elijah, we see the great power of righteous prayer.
Prayer is powerful tool for us to use whatever our circumstance, whether in sorrow or joy. In sickness or health.
That is the point that James here is teaching us, the great power of prayer. Power that Tim the Toolman Taylor would be envious of.
But how do we apply this in these most debated texts here today in our own lives?
To start, we pray in all circumstances
To start, we pray in all circumstances
Let us here at Land O’ Lakes Bible Church be a people who are devoted to pray. To pray in the midst of suffering and sorrow. To be a people to pray in the midst of illness. To be a people who pray and confess sin. A people who pray and sing praise to God in thanksgiving.
Let us make it a daily habit to be in prayer to our Heavenly Father, entrusting that he hears us, because Christ is interceding on our behalf.
Secondly, let us call on others to pray for us and with us.
Secondly, let us call on others to pray for us and with us.
Prayer is powerful, but how much more powerful when it is done together with one another. We will go in more depth on this momentarily, but for now, see that prayer is not intended to be done alone, but together, as the body of Christ.
In calling on others to pray, there is an appropriate application for you as the church to call on us as elders to come and to pray with you and over you. It is even okay if you desire to be anointed with oil as a sign of trusting yourself to the LORD.
While there is nothing magical about the oil, it is a means of simply anointing you before God, saying you are marked by your trust in him in the midst of your present illness.
Again, prayer is the main point here. And as the body of Christ, we here at Land O’ Lakes Bible Church want to be a people where we can pray for one another’s sorrows, for one another’s joys, for one another’s sickness, for one another’s struggle with sin, and we could even add spiritual growth to this.
By the way, I think we do this well. But we must never become complacent in praying for one another.
Thirdly, let us confess our sins to one another
Thirdly, let us confess our sins to one another
As we pray together, let us also labor to confess our sins to one another. For this original audience, partiality and division plagued the church. And reconciliation was needed throughout the body.
And the same goes for us, brothers and sisters. Where there is disunity and strife, let us be quick to confess our sin against one another and pray for one another and for further unity among us as the church.
And if there be other sins, let us confess those too. Appropriately of course, not to the whole or certain sins in mixed gender. let us be wise and discerning in that.
But in confessing our sin to one another, we are able to bring others in and help us as we labor and fight for spiritual wholeness together.
This is how we can harness the power of prayer in our fight to be spiritually whole. This is how we use the first of two powerful tools the Lord has given us. We now turn to the second.
Point #2: One Another
Point #2: One Another
We have already alluded towards this second powerful tool in the call to confess sin to one another.
In the midst of our battle for spiritual wholeness, in battling our double-mindedness, the struggles of partiality, the danger of the tongue, our fight against arrogance, our struggles in the midst of suffering and holding fast, the Lord has not left us alone in these.
The fight for spiritual wholeness was never meant to be done alone. The Christian life from the beginning has always meant to be done together, in community with the family of God, the body of Christ, the local church.
The local church is where we carry out the one another’s of the Bible. In the local church is where we pray for one another, confess to one another, and labor for one another’s salvation.
And while some would argue these can be done in small groups and with Christian friends, this is not the same thing.
Those groups of friends and small groups, while helpful, lack a mutual commitment to one another. And those small groups were not to whom Jesus gave the keys of the kingdom.
The keys of the kingdom are given to the local church to exercise. It too is in the local church that is communicated as being the body of Christ where members are connected to one another.
Not members of a social club, but members of the body. Members that are working for the good of one another. Members working towards the same goal and mission. Members commited to one another.
But not just any commitment. Commitment to labor for one another’s spiritual wholeness and one another’s salvation.
19 My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back,
20 let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
We are to labor to bring one another back from sin, we are to rebuke and correct one another as needed.
And brothers and sisters, we need this kind of help along the way. Because there are times were we are going to stumble, when we will fall back into our double-mindedness and are going to need that loving and brave brother or sister to call us out on our junk and point us back to Jesus.
Friends, do you realize this is the kind of commitment that we are making when we commit to the local church as members? We are making the formal commitment with one another to labor for this kind of spiritual good for one another? A kind of commitment to pursue one another if any should stray? A commitment to keep such a Christian watchfulness over one another?
Biblical Church Membership isn’t simply about putting our names on a church’s role. It is about a set of mutual commitments in these ways to labor for the good of the entire body. Mutual commitments made among the body. The body to us and us to the body.
Let us commit to one another that we will keep this kind of Christian watchfulness over one another.
Maybe for some, this means that part of the application for you this morning is to consider to wrestle through your own need to formally commit to others within this local body of church membership. And if you aren’t sure of these things, at least talking through what church membership looks like.
For others, the application for you is that maybe you are the very one needing to be brought back. That you have wandered in your various sin and that you need to repent of that sin.
Whether it be the sin of causing strife and division within the body Or maybe it is the sin of gossip and slander, failing to control your tongue. Maybe it is being brought back from wandering in the sin of sexual immorality. Or any other sin that is plaguing your soul that you have yet to let go and turn from.
Friend if this is you, come and talk to an elder or another mature member in the church. Confess sin and let us help bring you back to Christ as we pursue spiritual wholeness together. We want to help one another pursue Christ! This is the beauty of the local church!
Still, there likely others in a group this size of those sitting in our midst who have yet to be brought to the LORD. Those who are still wandering in the midst of their sins, having never trusted in Jesus for their salvation.
Friend, if that’s you. I want to try and not bring you back from your wandering, but bring you to the truth for the first time.
I want you to hear that though you have sinned, though you have shown partiality, though you have used your tongue as a deadly weapon in how you speak to and about others, though you have fallen short of the glory of God, there is hope. For there is one who came and suffered so that we could live. One who was mocked and beaten and pierced to take away our sin. His name is Jesus. And he died for our sins, but he did not remain dead, he rose again defeating the curse of sin and death.
Friend, this Jesus is what too will save your soul from death and cover your sins. There is not a need to clean yourself up, there is not a need to get yourself ready. Your only need is to humble yourself in acknowledging your need in a Savior and trusting in Jesus to be that Savior who takes away the curse of sin and death. Friend, believe this good news today so that the multitude of your sins can be covered by the blood of Jesus.
Let’s pray…