Opening Joke:
There was a pastor who had a parrot. All the parrot would say was, “Let’s pray, let’s pray.” He learned that one of his deacons had a parrot that would only say, “Let’s kiss. Let’s kiss.” So the pastor invited the deacon and his parrot over to his house. When the deacon arrived they put the parrots into the same cage to see what would happen. The deacon’s parrot said, “Let’s kiss, let’s kiss.” The pastor’s parrot said, “Thank you, Lord. My prayers have been answered.” There’s great power in prayer.
Today we are going to continue talking about prayer…this is our third week dedicated to the subject…and that’s because there are very few things we can discuss that are as important to our spiritual growth, and our relationship with Christ as prayer. The truth is we serve an invisible God, who we can see actively in our daily lives, who answers our prayers when we call on Him, and who we can get to know better through an authentic prayer life.
The text today is going to come from the book of James…It can be found in the New Testament near the end…after the book of Hebrews and before 1st and 2nd Peter…if you get to any of the John’s or Revelations you have gone to far…and if you get to the maps you’ve gone really too far, so flip back a bit…
While James is a relatively small book, perhaps it is just a couple of pages in your Bible…the small number of pages that make up the book is not a reliable reflection on the massive amount of wisdom that can be found in James. In fact a large part of the book of James is written on the subject of prayer…and how, and when, and why we are suppose to pray.
The King James version says it like this…
The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much…
(James 5:16)
Now let me read you the verse in context with it’s surrounding…
13Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. 14Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. 16Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.
I think we would all agree here today…that we want our prayers to be powerful, and effective…so how do we accomplish that? We spent the past two weeks looking at how we prayer…and why we do the little things in prayer like say, in Jesus name…we decided that there isn’t a formula to our prayers, but that there are defiant guidelines from the Bible for us to follow, while we communicate with God.
So at first glance this verse looks amazing and it is…because basically what it said was you have a problem, your sick, well pray in faith and it will be taken care of for you…
And that is great news isn’t it? I love the idea that we serve a God that will first of all listen to us…and not only does He listen but He answers our prayers. But upon closer examination there is a condition here isn’t there? That one little word…righteous!
That word kind of scares us though right? I mean what exactly is righteous…I know I don’t want to be self-righteous…but sometimes we confuse righteousness with being judgmental right? Let’s talk about a few things that being righteous is…and isn’t!
And who exactly is, and how do we become this person of rightousness…
I. The Man Who Prays
The first thing that is important to point out here is that a righteous man does not mean a perfect person…it doesn’t even mean an innocent person…after all there is no one alive, either past or present other than Jesus would fit this category right? No one is perfect or innocent, but righteous here means just a person.
It means:
A. An Imperfect Person…
i. Now I have good news today and there is some bad news…and some of you may disagree with me on this point…but your not perfect…and your prayers will never be powerful, they will never be effective until you realize that your imperfect…we have all messed up, and we continue to mess up, but the righteous person is a person who has been justified, or made right by the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made on the cross. Righteous here means an imperfect person, living in a state of grace, and forgiveness.
Righteous person here means:
B. A Renewed Person…
i. Again, until we approach Jesus and ask for our sins to be forgiven…until we repent of our past sins, than our prayers will not be effective or powerful. And if you’re here today and you have never asked God for forgiveness, it really isn’t as difficult as your thinking it is…here’s why:
Have you ever told a lie? No matter how big or how small it was that was a sin…
Have you ever taken something that didn’t belong to you? Than that was a sin…no matter how big or how small.
Have you ever looked at someone judgmentally? That was a sin…
Have you ever had a bad attitude towards another person? That was a sin…
And don’t feel bad, because we have all done everything I just talk about…and the greatest news I could ever tell you is that all you have to do to become a renewed person…to have a new life…to be forgiven of any of that stuff, is to ask for forgiveness, and to begin to seek a relationship with God. Which then takes us to the next thing that a righteous person is…
Righteous person here means:
C. An obedient Person…
i. They serve God with all their heart, they look for opportunities to tell others about His love…and their life style lines up with God’s Word.
Examples of righteous men from the Bible include Abel, Noah, Abraham…
And this all makes sense because:
ii. An unrighteous person does not pray because they have no reason to pray!
Another characteristic of a righteous person is they
D. Are a loving Person
i. The righteous person loves all, not because they are righteous but rather because they have God’s love shinning through them! You hear this every week and I am not going to stop…ever…
Love God, and Love Others! Love is the tool God has equipped us with to reach others…
So if these are the characteristics of a righteous person…than how should someone that lines up with these characteristics pray?
II. How He Prays – “Effectual and fervent”…the NIV says powerful and effective!
A. They pray powerfully…Now I don’t believe this means shouting or carrying on in prayer…but rather the prayer is powerful because of the faith and expectancy that the righteous person has in God, that loves to answer our prayers.
From this point on there is a ton of stuff to explore…
First, lets read the verse over again in its entirety…
13Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. 14Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. 16Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.
Let me ask you a question how much more faith can a person show then calling on the elders or leaders of the church for prayer when they are sick? Asking for prayer is faith in action, but that isn’t the only thing worth mentioning here.
It is widely believed, and when put into the context of these verses understandably so, that sometimes, and the KEYWORD here is, SOMETIMES, our sickness is connected to our spiritual health.
I am not a doctor, but I do believe that guilt, regret, or depression from the mistakes of our pasts can cause sickness…and even if you didn’t agree with that statement, no one would deny that they can defiantly contribute to an illness.
When you confess your sins, the Bible tells us that you are forgiven…so if your holding onto something from your past, you must learn to let go of the guilt, the shame…or whatever else your holding onto, you have to let it go!
Now, I want to point something out to you that I believe many people miss…I have missed it…and at times I have got caught in this game…lets look back at verse 12.
It says, “Above all, my brothers, do not swear not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your “Yes” be yes, and your “No,” no, or you will be condemned.”
(James 5:12)
Now here is the thing…verse 12 sounds like James is talking to someone who is in trouble doesn’t it? It also sounds like someone who is having relationship problems…or someone who has been put on the spot…
OK…so here we go with this one…oaths were very popular during these days…in fact there was this group of religious scholars named the Pharasee’s and they liked to use oaths, and these oaths would have different degrees of seriousness…so they would tak an oath that wasn’t all that serious and when they went back on their word they would use the fact that the oath wasn’t that serious to justify their hypocritical actions…alright.
Did anyone in here ever do this as a kid? Remember the game? I swear on my Aunt Suzy’s Dog…only to find out that your friend didn’t have a aunt named Suzy. Alright so you get the point…Or I swear on my Grandma’s grave…the only thing was your grandmother wasn’t dead yet…
And what James is saying here is be a person of integrity…and in verse 12 James doesn’t give the answer, He say’s don’t swear…and the reader is saying ahhh ok so what should I do then?
Then in verse 13 James gives us the answer he says, pray!
III. The Obvious Answer
So maybe your asking the question, so what? What is going to happen if I begin to try to live a righteous life…if I start to serve God…and if I pray in faith…then what?
The obvious answer is found in verse 16…God will hear your prayers and will answer them!
As obvious as the answer is to this question, there is also an obvious limitation…some of you are sitting there saying what? Well, here is an example…Christ when He was betrayed prayed for all the people who murdered Him, but we would not believe that they were all saved, would we? And don’t you think that David, or Moses, or some other righteous dude in the Bible prayed and their prayer wasn’t answered?
But I do want to pause here and thank God for all the answered prayers in my life…and in your life, because more often than not He answers our prayers!
In the Bible we have example after example of what happens when a righteous person prays…
We serve a God that through prayer a lions mouth was shut and Daniel escaped the den…
We serve a God that through prayer a giant was slayed by a little boy…
We serve a God that through prayer Elijah called down fire from heaven and defeated the false god of Baal.
We serve a God that through prayer a small nation of Israel has been protected for thousands of years.
We serve a God that through prayer my own daughter was healed of a serious sickness.
We serve a God that through prayer will take care of any issue you have, if you give Him the chance.
