The Bible Says It; Do It

James 5:13 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. 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. 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. 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.

The title of this sermon is “The Bible says it; do it.” Through James, God gives us specific instruction on what we should do and how we should do in a variety of circumstances. And the instruction that God gives us here is actually in the form of imperatives. Where the ESV says in verse 13, “Let him pray”, I think the Amplified version translates it better literally when it says, “He must pray”. This whole book, the book of James, we’ve seen now for months, is full of instruction for the follower of Christ…you’re a Christian, saved by grace through faith, and here’s how you should live your life now. And the end of the letter very clearly stays with that same theme..“The Bible says it; just do it.” So let’s dive into the text and see what God is telling us, verse-by-verse.

13 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray.

PRAY. Don’t let your feelings consume you. Always pray so you don’t lose heart.

I don’t know about you guys, but when I’m down, when I’m suffering, when I’m having a hard time, sometimes all I wanna do is just wallow in it. Maybe you’re like that…when suffering comes, all you want to do is retreat, curl up in a ball, and just do nothing at all.

Some of y’all are like that..some of you aren’t. Some people, when things get hard, they put in maximum effort to avoid the suffering they’re experiencing. Maybe that looks like deep cleaning the house or finishing that big home project that you haven’t gotten to yet.

If we find ourselves in the midst of a time of suffering, God’s command in James 5:13 is telling us that each of those responses is wrong…wallowing in self-pity: WRONG.. Running away from what we’re experiencing: WRONG.

James says that the appropriate response, the one that is pleasing to God, is this: PRAY.

And if you remember, James is ending this letter the same way he started it. James 1:2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. Here’s the point that James is making: When we experience trials, when we experience suffering…when we’re totally at a loss, God says to pray, and that’s how you’ll make it through.

Listen, we are promised that we will have troubles in this life…it is guaranteed that we will suffer, and the first line of defense when suffering comes, God’s Word is showing us, is to pray.

Here’s what Jesus told His disciples: Luke 18:1 And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. We will all suffer, and in order to prevent us from losing heart in that suffering, we are called, before anything else, to pray. This is an imperative from God..if we are suffering, we are commanded to PRAY…

But what about when things are good?

James 5:13b Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.

Now, singing praise is a form of prayer. When we lift up our voices to the Lord in praise, we are communicating with God…when we’re praising, we’re praying…are you with me?

Too often though, we see prayer and praise as a way to get us out of what we’re struggling with rather than seeing prayer and praise as a way to invite God into every moment of our lives, regardless of the circumstance.

Because when things are going, well, we tend to forget God. What James is telling us is that whether we’re up or whether we’re down, God should be our central focus… And if we are going to invite him into our weakest moments because we know he can pull us out, then we are absolutely going to invite him into our greatest moments because he is the reason we are there… Every good and perfect gift comes from above, and any time we recognize anything good in our lives, that’s an opportunity to say hallelujah. That’s an opportunity to praise the Lord. Every moment that you’re cheerful is an opportunity to praise the Lord.

And then verse 14 says

James 5:14 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.

The word for sick here is used all throughout the New Testament..it’s most often translated as weak, and it can mean physically weak, mentally weak, Spiritually weak, lacking in faith…and the solution is to have the elders, the leaders in the church pray for them.

An elder is a pastor, a leader of the church who meets 1 Tim 3 and Titus 1 qualifications…

Now, the oil represents the power of the Holy Spirit, but please understand that it’s not the oil that heals. “Anointing him with oil IN THE NAME OF THE LORD.” It’s the Lord that heals. And we do this because the Bible says to do it…pretty simple, right?

A couple years ago, Luke was just a little baby, and he was sick for the first time..has his first fever. And Haley and I are struggling with it…remember the first time your baby got sick? So I’m at work and I see a friend of mine and he can tell something is wrong..so I tell him Luke is sick, and I’m worried..so he prays with me for Luke, and then he says, take him to the elders of the church, let them anoint him with oil and pray over him…and I’m like “I’ve never done that before…I’ve never been in a church where they do that before.” and you know what he said? He said “The Bible says it; do it.” I got home from work that day. Luke still had a fever. I called an elder of the church, said “Luke is sick, can you pray for him?” He said absolutely…We made a short drive to their house, they anointed him with oil and prayed over him in the name of the Lord…by the time we got back home, the fever was gone, Luke had his energy back, and it was like he was never sick….“The Bible says it; do it.” Amen?

James 5:15 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. 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.

Ways of dealing w sin:

Celebrate (no shame..embrace it) DITCH

Pride month, Shout your abortion, celebrate your divorce…movements like that

Bragging about how many beers you drink and how many people you’ve slept with

Cover (religious..hide it) DITCH

Self righteousness…those who place their worth in their actions…not in the blood of Jesus (the only true source of righteousness) but in the way others see them act

These are the people that sit up here in the seat of the Pharisee and look down on all the other sinners…and there’s no way that they could ever let anyone know about their own sin, because then they would lose this false moral high ground that they’ve created in their own mind.

Confess (as soon as you say it out loud to another, it breaks)..we value privacy (1-2) not secrecy (zero) ROAD

The reason that we have sickness in this world is because of sin…the sin of Adam. In Genesis chapter 3, sin entered the world, and sickness and death came with it. Most of the time, when you look around, and you see someone experiencing sickness and pain, you can blame it on Adam and Eve.

What James is showing us here in chapter 5, though, is that sometimes, our sickness is a direct result of our sin. If someone gets cirrhosis of the liver, as a result of their heavy drinking, then that sickness was brought on by sin. When individuals live a promiscuous lifestyle, there are physical diseases that they may have to deal with. It doesn’t always look like that though..maybe there’s a man who focuses on his career more than his family (that’s sin)...and his body deteriorates because of it.

But it’s not always physical sickness that results from sin in our own life. Mental or spiritual sickness can be the result of guilt, can be the result of holding anger and hatred in our heart….

confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed

CATHOLIC (I have to confess to an ordained priest) vs. BAPTIST (I don’t need to confess my sin to anyone but God).CONFESS your sins to a believer (all believers are priests) 1 Pet 2:9…if you are in Christ, then you are a royal priesthood.. That means that 1) You don’t have to go into a booth and confess your sins to an ordained priest, but 2) You should confess your sin to a trusted brother of sister in Christ… so that they can pray for you, and that believer’s prayer will be part of your healing.

I heard a pastor say that he will counsel anyone that needs help..he will pray for anyone that needs healing, no matter the circumstance…but if someone comes to him for counsel or healing, whatever they’re struggling with, he always starts by humbly and gently asking a simple question: Is there any unconfessed sin in your life that may be plaguing you? Why? Because the Word of God shows us right here that there is HEALING in confessing our sin to one another.

Sometimes, the barrier that stands between us and breakthrough is unconfessed sin…and what that means is that we shouldn’t embrace our sin, and we shouldn’t hide our sin either…we should confess it privately.

The Bible says that we should confess our sins to one another, and it also says that we should pray for one another.

16b pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

If we are going to be a church that fulfills the will of God, then we better be a “one another” church… A “one another” church is one that has members who pick each other up. Some of us are suffering right now. Some of us are cheerful right now..Here’s the awesome thing about a body of believers…Not all of us will suffer at the same time. Not all of us will be cheerful at the same time… and here’s what it means for us…

Galatians 6:2 says Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. When you’re down I’ll pick you up. When I’m down you pick me up.

When you don’t have the faith, I’ll pray for you. When I don’t have the faith, you pray for me. (Especially true of a church plant)

Here’s what James shows us about prayer, when he talks about the prayer of faith: We need to be surrounded by righteous people who will pray for us, and we need to be righteous people who will pray for others.

And it is by grace, through faith in Christ…by the blood of Jesus, that we are made righteous (right before God). The Holy Spirit is sanctifying me..HE resides within me, and that means that through Him, my prayers ARE POWERFUL. THAT MEANS that if you are IN CHRIST, then God can do miraculous works through your prayers.

And you cannot and will not convince me that God does not still work today in the way that He worked when this book was written.

God was a healer then, and He’s a healer now…and here’s a difficult truth for us to come to grips with: Sometimes healing doesn’t take place on this side of eternity. If you have prayed for healing for someone you love, and it didn’t come in this life, I’m sorry. I have prayed in faith for individuals who died, who got their ultimate healing in heaven…Jesus didn’t heal everyone while He walked the earth. When He heals the man at the pool of Bethesda, the Bible tells us that there are many there who are blind, or lame, or paralyzed…and they all want healing, but the Bible says that He just heals the one…

Why? I don’t know…That’s the sovereignty of God. His thoughts and His ways are much higher than mine…and sometimes His answer to a prayer may be “not right now.” But God STILL HEALS. GOD STILL WORKS MIRACLES. AND THE PRAYER OF A RIGHTEOUS PERSON STILL HAS GREAT POWER.

This week, I asked you guys to send me some testimonies of times when God has answered your prayers of faith in miraculous ways…and I’ve gotten numerous responses of physical healing, of God’s provision with a new job and with finances that came out of nowhere…testimonies of mental health restored. And they served as an encouragement to me, they strengthened my faith and reminded me of times when God has answered my prayers, requests that were big and small.

Story of Luke’s ear infection turned dancing party: VIDEO.

Story of Luke not breathing: PHOTO.

Story of Brad’s daughter…

If you want to tell me that God doesn’t still heal, that God doesn’t perform miracles anymore, I’m sorry, but you got to me too late!

God is still healing physical bodies…just like we see in the Bible.

God is still taking couples who can’t have children and giving them miracle babies…just like we see in the Bible.

God is still setting people free from depression.

God is still providing a way for His people when they can’t even see a way.

…and God still invites us to pray bold prayers in faith…

Share testimonies?

Invitation for prayer.

“When man works, man works. When man prays, God works.” In other words, you are not going to will yourself out of the incredibly difficult circumstance that you are facing… But God can.