We Believe Prayer Changes Things (James 5:13-20)

Good morning! Please open your Bibles to James chapter 5.

There was a sweet, devout Christian woman who prayed every day. She voiced her prayers out loud. She lived in a little apartment with thin walls, and on her neighbor on the other side of the wall could hear ever word of her prayers. It drove her crazy. So when she would be praying for something, the atheist would hear it and beat on the wall and say, “You’re wasting your time! There is no God! And even if there is, He doesn’t care about your little concerns!”

So this made this sweet woman of God pray even louder!

One day, she was in dire need of groceries. She prayed out loud for groceries, asked God to provide. So when the atheist heard this, he smiled and said, I’m gonna prove to this woman that there’s no all powerful God that’s going to provide her groceries. He went to the store, bought a bunch of groceries, placed them at his neighbor’s door, then went into his own apartment and waited for her to come home from work.

When she did, she saw the groceries. She got really excited. She didn’t even go inside. She dropped to her knees right there in the hallway and said, “God, thank you, I knew you would provide, and praise the Lord, you did!” And when the atheist heard this he opened his door and said, “Ha! You foolish old lady, God didn't buy you those groceries. I bought you those groceries. There’s no God up there listening to your prayers! What do you think of that?”

The woman smiled and said, “That’s even better. See, I knew that God would provide my groceries. I just didn't know he would make the devil pay for it.

This is the second week of our series, We Believe. We’re looking at five simple truthful statements that express who this church is and what our purpose is, and can be easily understood by anyone we come into contact with.

I told you last week that the difficult thing about this series is that I think you are going to agree with everything I say. Last week, we said that We Believe in the Authority of God’s Word. Well no Christian is going to argue with that. This week, our simple truthful statement is We Believe Prayer Changes Things. Again, I don’t think anybody in here is really going to disagree. The difficulty is making sure our simple truthful statements are backed by consistent, visible behavior.

I believe in the authority of God’s Word. Do I read God’s Word? Do I base my daily decision making on its principles? Do I hold myself accountable for what it says.

And so we are going to ask the same kinds of questions about prayer. Do I live my life as though I believe prayer changes things? If so, the Consistent Obvious Behavior is going to be, Do I pray? Do I believe God answers prayer? And do I see the results of answered prayer in my life? That’s where we are going today. So we are in James 5 this morning. I’m going to read verses 13-20.

English Standard Version Chapter 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. 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.

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.

You may be seated. Let’s pray.

In these few verses, the apostle James packs in A LOT! The whole last section of this little letter is about prayer. And here's what I'd like to do with you. I want to give you four specific times we should pray. And next week we’ll come back and talk about three specific attitudes you should have when you pray.

But first, we need to spend a little time talking about what this passage ISN’T about. Although this seems simple on the surface, most scholars would say its one of the hardest to understand in the entire letter, and maybe the whole New Testament.

1. What this passage ISN’T about

preparing for death (last rites) Verses 14-15 are the basis for the Roman Catholic sacrament of last rites, where a dying person is anointed with oil by a priest, makes their confession, and is then spiritually saved. But this can’t be right for a number of reasons. First, the context of the passage is about physical healing, not spiritual salvation. Also, the passage emphasizes confessing our sins to one another, not to a priest. But most importantly, in the Catholic view, there’s no surrendering to Christ as your personal savior. Saying “Bless me Father for I have sinned” as you take your last breaths doesn’t save you. Oil doesn’t save you. A priest cannot absolve you of sin. Only Jesus saves.

faith healing: Verse 15— “the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick” has been the basis for staging healing rallies by someone with the spiritual gift of miraculous healing. But look closely at verse 14: The sick person is instructed to call the elders (plural) of the church. Run of the mill pastors and elders working in the local church, not superstar TV evangelists or faith healers.

A word about anointing oil. Someone recently asked me whether anointing with oil is required by Scripture, and if it is, how come so few pastors do it. In my opinion (and this is just my opinion) it isn’t required. This is the only place in the New Testament where anointing a sick person is mentioned, but there are multiple healings where it isn’t. I don’t think there is anything wrong with it, and if someone asked me to anoint them with oil I would. But I think any time you introduce a physical object into the spiritual act of prayer, whether it be oil or rosary beads or candles or a crucifix, there’s a risk someone will associate miraculous power with that inanimate object. And that’s the definition of idolatry.

Absolute physical healing The passage can’t mean that every person who prays for physical healing will be physically healed. We know from personal experience that that isn’t true. And the idea that this is an absolute guarantee has done a lot of spiritual damage. Go back to the so-called faith healers. What is their trump card if someone they lay their hands on doesn’t get better? “Well, they just didn’t have enough faith.” And the person who doesn’t get better either blames God for not keeping His promises, or blames himself for not praying hard enough. And you start putting your faith in prayer instead of in the one who hears prayer.

Exclusively spiritual healing. In light of all this, there are some who see this passage as not talking about sick people at all, but only spiritual healing. Maybe James is talking about someone who is in the middle of a crisis of faith. They are prayed for by the elders, and are spiritually strengthened as a result. Hence they will be raised up at the resurrection. But again the evidence in our everyday experience proves this can’t be true. Just as we know a lot of people who prayed for healing who weren’t healed, we also know people who were. So we can’t say its just spiritual healing anymore than we can say its a guarantee of physical healing.

So now that we’ve ruled out some of the things this passage isn’t talking about, what is it talking about? What do we really mean when we say prayer changes things? In the time we have left, I want to get to three truths about when to pray, and three truths about how to pray.

First: Pray when you’re suffering v. 13a

Look at Verse 13. Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Now, let's answer the question. You ready? Is anyone among you suffering? It's always a yes. It's always a yes in every congregation at any given time. Physical suffering, emotional suffering, spiritual suffering-- it's all a normal part of life.

A little context: James is writing specifically to scattered Jewish believers. We know this from how James addresses his letter in James 1:1— “to the twelve tribes in the dispersion.

They were scattered because they were fleeing persecution. Acts 8 says, "A great persecution arose against the church at Jerusalem, and the believers were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria" And even after they were scattered, they were still experiencing suffering and persecution. They were displaced, far from home, and the Gentiles in Samaria didn’t like them any more than the Jews in Jerusalem. Can you imagine? You’re driven out of Jerusalem because you are Christians, and you’re persecuted everywhere else because you’re Jewish. You can’t win!

How many of you can relate to that feeling? I can’t win. No matter what I do, I’m still behind on my rent. I’m still criticized at work. Our family makes it through one crisis only to have another one pop up.

We cannot avoid suffering. It's a fact of life. We can't avoid it because we live in a fallen world that has been broken by sin. And even if we could somehow manage to never be impacted by the sin around us, we still have to deal with the sin within us. We are fallen people living in a fallen world.

So is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. But here's the thing. Sometimes people seem to take this as, you only have to pray when are suffering. Then all of a sudden, they're Mother Teresa. A 2023 Pew Research survey asked adults who said they pray what they pray for. And the top four answers all dealt with suffering

76%: Loved ones in times of crisis

71%: when someone was ill

68% Other people facing times of crisis

56%: when they themselves were ill

And we get it. We understand that when crisis hits, that people instinctively will turn their voices upward toward heaven and pray to God, asking God for help. Let me just throw this out. Perhaps one of the reasons that we suffer is because when a crisis hits, we talk to God. We just don't talk to God until a crisis hits. And God longs for us to turn to Him. And God, in His grace toward us, will do whatever it takes to get us to turn to Him.

So, pray in times of suffering, and realize that every single moment is a time of suffering!

Charles Spurgeon put it this way. "Prayer pulls the rope down below and the great bell rings above in the ears of God. Some scarcely stir the bell, for they pray so languidly; others give only an occasional jerk at the rope. But he who communicates with heaven is the man who grasps the rope boldly and pulls continually with all his might."

2. Pray when you’re smiling (v. 13b) James continues. "Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise." Singing praise is a form of prayer. When life is good, praise music should come out of your lips. Christianity is a singing faith.. Not atheism. Atheists have nothing to sing about. In the 1800s, there was a famous agnostic named Robert Ingersoll. He was a lawyer, author, and popular speaker. At one event he was introduced as “The Great Agnostic Robert Ingersoll,” and the nickname stuck. When Ingersoll died in 1899, his funeral notice made it clear that there would be no singing at his funeral. Most of us can’t imagine a funeral service without any singing.

Before Janice Moses passed away in 2023, she asked to meet Mike and I to go over plans for her funeral service. She had nine songs she wanted played or sung at her funeral. And I remember Mike and I kind of looking at each other, and one of us said, “Mrs. Janice, if we sing all of these, there won’t be time for anything else.” And Janice looked at us and said, “And what’s wrong with that?”

We didn’t get all nine in, but I remember what a joyful homegoing service that was.

Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praises. And some of you are like, “I don't sing.” And some of you, the people sitting around you are going, “He doesn’t sing.”

But that's OK, because we're not auditioning for a choir. God is conditioning us for the future. Start singing now because you're going to be doing a lot of it in heaven. So the question is not, do I have a voice? The question is, do I have a song? So this is very natural for the Christian. You're cheerful, sing.

But others are saying, “Well, I’m not cheerful.” I don't mean generally. But maybe you're going through a very difficult time. And because you're going through a difficult time, it's just not in you. You're not feeling it. And so you might say, I'm kind of exempted from this because I'm not cheerful. But here's what the word cheerful means. It means to be well in your soul-- not emotionally or outwardly, but the wellbeing of the soul. Let me ask you, Christian, saved by God's grace, redeemed by the blood of the lamb, is it well with your soul? It is well with your soul because of what he has done for you and the imputed righteousness of Christ to you. So are you in that condition? Yes. Then let us sing. Let us sing.

The Christian is not joyful because of what is going on outside of him, but what is going on inside of him. There is an inner world. And if it is controlled by God, it will bring joy in the midst of chaos. Proverbs says, "A merry heart makes a cheerful countenance." So pray when you're suffering. Pray when you're smiling.

3. Pray for healing v. 14-15a (pray when you’re sick)

Verse 14-- "Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up."

We’ve already talked about this one a good bit, so I won’t camp out on it. But let me just say this. God can and does heal. Sometimes he chooses to heal people through natural processes. Did you know your body has built-in natural things that happen when you get cut, when you get hurt, to help naturally heal you? Sometimes he uses medicine, doctors, hospitals. Sometimes he heals miraculously. And sometimes he doesn't heal at all. He says no. Paul himself had a thorn in the flesh. He said, I prayed to God three times. This is Paul. This is the apostle. I prayed three times. God finally answered me and said, uh uh, my grace is all you need. My strength will be manifest in your weakness. I'm going to keep you weak so that you'll always lean on my strength. That was Paul's answer. But when we're sick, we should be praying. We should be asking. We should be knocking. We should be seeking. We should present our bodies as a living sacrifice. So pray when you're suffering. Pray when you're smiling. Pray when you're sick. 4. Pray when you sin (pray for forgiveness)

James 5:15

“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.”

Now, I need to explain that very quickly. I don't mean pray during your sin. Hey, I know I’m sinning right now, so please forgive me. Or, God, I know what I’m about to do so please forgive me. What I mean is that when you know that you have sinned, you should pray.

This is called confession or repentance. Once you know, and you identify it, and you confess it, then by God's grace, turn away from it. Confession, repentance. In verse 15, James seems to indicate a sickness that is a result of sin in a person's life, a sinful circumstance. Not all sickness or suffering is the result of sin, but some of it is. God may use physical sickness to discipline a believer. To get them to acknowledge their sin to God and repent. Again, not always, but sometimes. But even if you aren’t facing physical consequences of sin, you are experiencing spiritual separation from God. Now, if you have asked Jesus to be your savior, you are no longer separated from God. And you can’t lose your salvation. But unconfessed sin or unrepentant sin does distance us from God. We feel far from God. So confessing our sin restores that relationship. 1 John 1:9 promises that "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

But what about verse 16: “Confess your sins to one another. and pray for one another.” Wait a minute. Does this mean I have to tell someone else about my sin, or can we just keep it between me and God? Well, the Bible says confess to one another and pray for one another.

Now, not to keep piling on our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, but this doesn’t mean going to a priest in a confessional booth. That’s not one another. This [the whole church] is one another.