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Intro

This morning we find ourselves at the end of a 6 week journey. A journey through the book of James. And it has been this letter that James wrote to the persecuted Jewish believers who had been scattered by Rome where we see some of most practical instruction and application anywhere in the New Testament.

Suffering/Trials

Temptation

Pride and judgment (showing favoritism)

Controlling our tongue

Dealing with sinful desires

And I have said all along that James is one of those letters where as a Christian, if you ever start to get a big head and think you are better than you really are, just read James and he will bring you back down to reality. His letter reminds us just how broken and sinful we can be sometimes.

And it is because of this brokenness that James is trying to establish the necessity for having a living faith that works itself out in all we do.

And when you read the book of James it can at times read like a book of disconnected anecdotes on Christian living, but then you get to the end of the letter and James brings it all together and you see that it is all connected.

That everything that James has been saying was with one theme in mind and that is the need to have a deep meaningful relationship with God through Jesus.

All the things he is talking about and warning against are dealt with when someone has intimacy with God.

And the opposite is true, that when there is not a deep connection to God, then our lives are going to demonstrate that in the way our sinful nature bubbles to the surface.

Power in the Text

So let’s jump in here and see how James closes out this letter and brings it all together.

James 5:13-16 NLT 13 Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray. Are any of you happy? You should sing praises. 14 Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven. 16 Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.

Here James has gone full circle and brought it back to the beginning of his letter. If you remember, he started out talking about suffering, and now he is closing with it.

He is essentially saying look, if you are suffering, pray. If things are going well, pray. Are you sick, pray. Have you sinned, confess and pray.

In other words, no matter what is going on in your life, your first response should be to take it to God, why?

Because we by nature when we are having a terrible day, find it easiest to confide in those whom we love the most.

Something bad happens you want to tell them about it. Something great happens to you, you want to tell them about it.

We go to the person we love the most. And James is saying that in everything, good or bad, whatever is going on in your life, the person you should be going to first is the person you love the most, and that person should be God.

So this should cause us to ask the question, is God the person I go to before anyone else in my life? And if he isn’t, then that is very telling as it relates to how much I say I love him, and how much I actually do.

Beyond that, James is saying not only are you to go to God, but you are to go to his community, his body, his Church.

But to do that will require humility.

If you are sick, call for the elders, call for the leaders in the Church. This is an act of faith. James doesn’t say to sit around and wait for the Church to come to you, you take that step and call for them.

Here we see the connection between sin and sickness. Notice, James is not saying that all sickness is the result of a person’s sin, Jesus make that very clear. But we do see that there are times when our sin is the cause of sickness.

And so James is saying be humble, admit you aren’t perfect. He says to confess your sin to one another.

Let me ask you a question. When was the last time you were in a Church where people were confessing their sin openly to each other?

It doesn’t happen, why? Because the Church has gotten pretty good and make it abundantly clear that we expect perfection from people. We don’t say that, but we certainly act like it.

And we read this and so we go to the commentaries and Bible dictionaries to try and explain that verse away. Hoping it has some hidden meaning rather than accepting it at face value and recognizing that it isn’t that what James is saying is hard to understand, it is just too hard to humble ourselves and actually do it.

James isn’t hard to understand, in fact it is probably one of the easiest letters in the New Testament to understand. And it is my hope that you will be willing to go back and read James again in its entirety. And when you realize that you can understand it, then you will desire to read more and keep reading.

Big Idea/Why it Matters

I don’t know about you but when I read the Bible I read about these characters and I think wow, these were spiritual powerhouses. These were giants of the faith. They were just so in tune with God and had such a deep connection to him that they are people we admire, but think we could never live up to their example.

I mean look at Moses and all that he did. He is probably the single biggest figure in all of the Old Testament, certainly among those who practice the Jewish faith.

Or how about David, the greatest King and most faithful King of Israel; described in the Bible as a man after God’s own heart.

Or how about Elijah and Elisha, two of the, if not the most famous and greatest prophets in the Old Testament second maybe only to Moses.

But when you read, and I mean really read about these giants of the faith you discover that Moses had a hard time trusting God. He practically refused to follow God’s call and kept making excuses as to why he couldn’t do it. He disobeyed God and wasn’t allowed to enter the promised land.

Or how about David, I mean the guy committed adultery, impregnated the married woman, and then had her husband killed to cover up his sin.

And then you get to Elisha. This guy performed crazy miracles like his mentor Elijah, even raised the dead, but the guy didn’t like to be teased.

2 Kings 2:23-24 NLT 23 Elisha left Jericho and went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, a group of boys from the town began mocking and making fun of him. “Go away, baldy!” they chanted. “Go away, baldy!” 24 Elisha turned around and looked at them, and he cursed them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of them.

You talk about an effective school anti-bullying program...

There is some weird stuff in the Bible, I can admit that. Elisha, come on. They called him bald and that was his reaction. (not really boys).

My point is, these people that we look at and think were these giants weren’t perfect.

Look at what James says about Elijah.

James 5:17-18 NLT 17 Elijah was as human as we are (some translations: a nature like ours), and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years! 18 Then, when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops.

In other words James is saying this man that when he prayed could literally stop it from raining for 3 1/2 years and then pray and get it to start again, he was just like you and me. He too had a nature like us and struggled with sin just like us and wasn’t perfect, just like us.

James is saying, Elijah has nothing on you. The question is, do you believe that? Do you believe that...

You could be be used like Moses to lead people who were far from God?

You could have intimacy with God like David?

You could pray for something like Elijah and have it happen, in this case for a sick person to be made well?

Do you? Do you believe that?

James is saying you should believe that because none of the other people you read about in the Old Testament have anything on you. In fact, you have something on them in that you have the full revelation of God’s word.

You have the indwelling Holy Spirit.

You have the power available in the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

He is trying to get them to understand that the kind of life he has been talking about living all through this letter is possible for each and every single one of them, but it will require intimacy with God and a close relationship with him.

Application/Closing

James is describing a living faith that works itself out in the way the community of believers interact with each other. In the way the Church responds to each other.

And this matters because God has chosen to use the Church, to use you and I to accomplish his will in this world. But that can’t happen if we aren’t in close relationship to him. If we don’t have a living faith.

And at the end of the day this living faith has one primary purpose, and it isn’t for our benefit.

James 5:19-20 NLT 19 My dear brothers and sisters, if someone among you wanders away from the truth and is brought back, 20 you can be sure that whoever brings the sinner back from wandering will save that person from death and bring about the forgiveness of many sins.

This is the last thing James says in his letter, and so it stands to reason that he closes with this point to drive home the point that when followers of Jesus not only listen to God’s word, but actually put it into practice, we are positioned in such a way to be used by God to perform the greatest miracle.

To see a person living in sin turn from it and come back to God. That is what God wants to use you for? Do you believe that? Do you understand that your life was chosen by God to have an eternal impact in the lives of those you come into contact with?

So take the words of James seriously. Consider the weight of his words and what they mean for your life and I pray that when you do that, you too will desire not faith of words only. But a living faith that not only changes you, but changes those around you.