A couple of months ago our dog, Susie, was apparently chasing some critter near our pool equipment, which resulted in several wires that are required for that equipment to work properly being broken. So I got my tools and equipment out and re-spliced all those wires and my equipment was working correctly again.
Then a couple of weeks later, I was getting an error message on my control panel that indicated that I had no power to the cell that generates the chlorine that is necessary to keep my pool clean and sanitized. And, sure enough, when I tested for chlorine in the water, there was none present. I checked all the wires that I had previously repaired and they all looked okay, but I figured that there must be something wrong with the wire that went to my chlorine generating cell, so I completely redid that splice. But when I hooked everything back up, I was still getting the same error message.
So I decided I would do some research on the internet to see if there might be some other issue causing my problem. And when I searched, the very first site that came up described exactly the problem I had encountered and showed how to fix the problem by re-soldering a connection on the motherboard. So I went down to the hardware store and picked up a cheap soldering iron and some solder and followed the directions I had found online and, sure enough, the problem was fixed. And that was a great relief because I discovered that my other option – calling out a service tech – probably would have meant that he would have replaced my whole motherboard and charged me $700 or $800.
But, because I had failed to first go to the internet and find those instructions, I had wasted a lot of time and some materials to do some work that wasn’t needed. As I thought about that, it occurred to me that how I handled that situation reflects how I often handle other problems in my life. I often waste a lot of time trying to handle those things on my own and only turn to prayer as a last resort. And in most cases what I discover is that if I had just made prayer my first response instead of my last resort, I would have avoided a whole lot of wasted time and effort.
That is James’ message to his readers in the passage we’ll look at this morning. Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to James chapter 5 and follow along as I read beginning in verse 13:
Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. 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. 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. 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. 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. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.
(James 5:13-18 ESV)
There is little doubt about the theme of this passage. Take a moment to go through this passage and underline or circle the words “pray”, “prayed” and “prayer”. [Wait for people to do that] How many times did James use those words in these six verses? [Wait for answers]. If I counted right those words are used 7 times in six verses. So would you agree that the main theme of this passage is the priority of prayer?
It’s really appropriate that James is the one who communicates the priority of prayer because he was such a man of prayer himself. He had such a reputation for prayer that his nickname was “Camel Knees” because of the big knots he developed on his knees as a result of spending so much time in prayer.
I’d love to say that I pray like that, too. But before we go any further this morning, I have a confession to make. This is an area where I really struggle. We’ve seen that the book of James contains a series of tests that we can use to evaluate the genuineness and maturity of our faith. And for the most part, I can honestly say that I do pretty well on most of those tests. But when it comes to the kind of prayer life that James writes about here, I know that I really fall short. So the message this morning is something that I need as much or more than any of us.
So let’s get to the heart of this passage right off the bat. Let me just share the bottom line of this passage and then we’ll use the rest of our time to develop it more fully. Here’s what I pray you’ll take away from the message this morning:
A mature disciple makes prayer the first response,
not the last resort
Let’s use this overall principle to guide us as we answer three questions about prayer that James answers in this passage and elsewhere in his letter:
1. When should I pray?
2. Who can pray?
3. How should I pray?
WHEN SHOULD I PRAY?
In this passage, James commands his audience to pray in three specific circumstances:
• When I am hurting emotionally (v. 13)
James begins this passage by addressing those who are “suffering”. The word he uses there is a general Greek word that describes suffering of any kind, but the emphasis is on the anguish that is created in the mind as a result of whatever circumstances the person is experiencing. So he is primarily dealing there with people who are hurting emotionally as a result of some trouble in their lives. Even though the underlying problem may be something tangible or material, the real issue is the emotional hurt that accompanies that issue.
We experience all kinds of problems that result in emotional hurt in our lives – problems in our family and other relationships, financial problems, problems at work, and even problems with our pool equipment. And those problems often lead to stress and anxiety. And I don’t know about you, but my first response in those situations is usually to try and fix the problem on my own. And in many, if not most, cases, what happens is that my efforts just create even more stress.
James teaches us that there is a better way. When I am hurting emotionally, when I experience stress and anxiety, prayer should not be my last resort, it needs to be my first response. Paul confirms this principle as well:
do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
(Philippians 4:6 ESV)
The antidote to my emotional hurts, to my stress and anxiety is to take some things to God in prayer, right? No, Paul says we are to take everything to Him in prayer – my relationships, my finances, my job and anything else in life that is stressing me out – even my pool equipment.
It’s really interesting that James immediately follows that command to pray when we are hurting emotionally with the command to sing praise when we are cheerful. The word translated “cheerful” doesn’t just mean being happy or feeling good. It implies optimism and joy even in the face of danger or trouble. The implication here is clear. When we pray as our first response in the midst of our emotional hurts, God overcomes our anxiety and allows us to have a heart that desires to sing praises to Him.
Are you hurting emotionally? Then make prayer your first response, not your last resort.
• When I am hurting physically (vv. 14-15a)
Verse 14 and the first part of verse 15 raise some questions that aren’t easy to answer. And I’m not sure we can definitively answer all those questions. But I am convinced that there is enough here that is clear to be of practical use for us in our prayer life.
The word for “sick” in verse 14 describes someone with a serious illness. It is the same word John used to describe Lazarus, who died from his sickness. It is used in Acts 9 to describe Dorcas, who also died as a result of her sickness. And it is used to describe the lame man at the pool of Bethesda in John 5. So James is describing someone who is experiencing serious physical trouble here – probably someone whose health issues were so serious that they were beyond the help of a doctor. That is indicated by the fact that such a person was to call the elders of the church to come to him or her rather than going to them and also by the fact that elders are to “pray over” that person. This is the only place in the Bible where that particular phrase is used and it indicates that the person may have been so sick that they were unable to get up off of his or her bed.
When they come to pray over the person, the elders are to anoint the person with oil. There is certainly not universal agreement on the significance of that action. Some take it to indicate that the best medicine is to be used, similar to the way the Good Samaritan poured oil on the wounds of the injured man.
But the more likely significance, in my opinion, is that the oil, as we see elsewhere in Scripture is symbolic of the Holy Spirit. That would certainly be consistent with the fact that the anointing was to be done “in the name of the Lord.” That would make it clear to all that the healing came from God and not from the actions of the elders. While we can’t be absolutely dogmatic that is the case, the one thing I can say confidently is that the oil itself has no power to heal. Only God has that power. That is why it seems unlikely to me that the oil somehow indicates that the elders are to apply some kind of medicine.
The real difficulty, however, comes from dealing with the first part of verse 15:
And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up.
On the surface, that makes it sound like as long as the prayer is offered up in faith there is a guarantee that God is going to heal the sick person. But we know from Scripture and from our own personal experience that is not the case. In order to understand what James is saying here we need to understand that in the Bible, sickness generally falls into one of three categories:
Three kinds of sickness:
1) Sickness unto death
There are some sicknesses that we never recover from in which God takes us home to be with Him. Earlier I mentioned the example of Dorcas who died from her sickness. Another example would be the baby born out of David and Bathsheba’s adulterous affair. Even though David prayed for the child, he still died.
Unfortunately, we see that even in the church, some people will claim that someone wasn’t cured of his or her illness because those who were praying just didn’t have enough faith. But the fact is that not every illness can be healed by faith because if that were the case then no faithful person would ever die. But eventually every one of us will face this kind of sickness that leads to death.
2) Sickness for discipline
Paul writes of this kind of sickness in 1 Corinthians 11:
For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.
(1 Corinthians 11:29-30 ESV)
Because the people were sinning by participating in the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner, God was disciplining them through sickness, and in some cases, even death. Although the prevailing teaching during the time of James was that all sickness resulted from sin, we know that is not the case. In fact, in just a moment we’ll use the words of Jesus to prove that is not always true. On the other hand, as we’ve just seen, there certainly is some sickness that God uses to discipline us when we sin in order to bring us back to Him.
3) Sickness for the glory of God
Sometimes God allows sickness into our lives because He wants to get glory by healing that sickness. Remember the account in John 9 where Jesus passed by a man who had been blind from birth. The disciples, reflecting what they had been taught asked Jesus who had sinned in order to cause the man’s blindness – the man or his parents. And here is how Jesus answered:
“It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
(John 9:3 ESV)
Then Jesus healed the man so that He would receive glory.
I’m so blessed to have participated in praying for those in our body who have incurred sickness for the glory of God. And certainly none of us would doubt for a moment that the healing that Paul and Shirley and others have experienced has resulted in God getting glory.
I believe that it is this last kind of sickness that James is addressing when he claims that the prayer of faith will heal the sick one. But the problem we have is that humanly we’re unable to discern which of the three kinds of sickness with which someone is afflicted. And the implication of that lack of insight is pretty obvious. We need to pray whenever someone experiences a serious sickness until God makes it clear what kind of sickness is involved by His answer to our prayer.
Are you hurting physically? Then make prayer your first response, not your last resort.
• When I am hurting spiritually (vv. 15b-16a)
This is the situation James addresses in the last half of verse 15 into verse 16. As we’ve already seen, at least some of the sickness and hurt that comes into our lives can result from our sin. And just like God has promised to heal our emotional hurt and those physical hurts that He wants to heal for His glory, He also promises to heal our spiritual hurts as well. That’s why James makes it clear at the end of verse 15 that if we are hurting because of sin, prayer will lead to the forgiveness of those sins, which will bring spiritual healing.
But there is a condition attached to that promise. In addition to prayer there is one more action we are commanded to take when we want to be healed of our spiritual hurts. We are commanded to confess our sins one to another.
So does that mean every Sunday we ought to come to church and all of us begin to confess all our sins publically? Obviously that is not what James is suggesting here. I’m confident that Scripture provides us with the proper guidance on what confessing our sins to one another ought to look like:
Confession should only be as public as the sin.
If the sin is only between me and God, I only need to confess it to Him. Perhaps if it is a sin that I have an ongoing problem with I need to confess it to another godly person who can hold me accountable and help me avoid that sin in the future. But it certainly doesn’t need to go any further than that. If I have sinned against another individual I need to go to that person one-on-one and confess it to that person and seek his or her forgiveness. If I’ve sinned against the entire church body, then I need to confess that to the church at an appropriate time.
Are you hurting spiritually? Then make prayer your first response, not your last resort.
Before we move on, let’s summarize the answer to our first question by returning to our bottom line:
A mature disciple makes prayer the first response,
not the last resort
So that means I need to pray every single time that I face emotional, physical or spiritual trouble. I don’t know about you, but for me that means I need to pray all the time.
Let’s move on and answer the second question we posed earlier:
WHO CAN PRAY? (vv. 16b-18)
James provides us with two clues that help us to answer this question. The first clue is found at the end of verse 16 when he writes:
The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.
So the first thing we learn that to be effective prayer must come from a “righteous person.” So the question we must then ask is this: “How does someone become a righteous person?” And the Bible is clear that none of can do that on our own. God compares those deeds which we call righteous to filthy rags. So the only way we can be righteous before God is through faith in Jesus, the one who shed His blood on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins and make us righteous in the sight of God. Paul summarized that principle like this:
For our sake he made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
(2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV)
So the first qualification if I want to pray is that I need to be a Christ follower who has placed my faith in Jesus alone as the basis for my righteousness before God.
But can just any regular old Christ follower pray or is prayer just reserved for pastors or elders or “super-saints?” That is the question James answers with his second clue – the example of Elijah. At first glance, that particular example might not be all that reassuring. After all, Elijah called down fire from heaven. But James makes sure to point out that Elijah “was a man with a nature like ours…” And if you read the accounts of Elijah in the Bible you will find that is so true. Elijah doubted God at times, he suffered from depression and basically asked God to take his life, he was afraid so he ran from Queen Jezebel. The lesson of Elijah is that you don’t have to be perfect to pray.
So let’s summarize our answer to this second question. Who can pray?
• Every Christ-follower
That brings us to our third and final question:
HOW SHOULD I PRAY?
Obviously this is a topic that we can’t even begin to cover completely in our remaining time, so let’s just focus on three of the most significant aspects of how we are to pray:
• Individually and corporately
In this passage, James moves from the individual – “let him pray” and “let him call” to the corporate – “let them pray” and “pray for one another”.
A healthy prayer life includes both individual and corporate prayer. In fact, our individual prayer often leads us to reach out to the entire body so that we can pray together. That’s one of the reasons we’ve been trying to include more opportunities for us to pray together in our worship gatherings.
• Comprehensively
There are obviously a lot of things we can pray about, but for a moment, let’s just limit our discussion to the three instances in which we are to pray that we identified early in this passage:
o When I am hurting emotionally
o When I am hurting physically
o When I am hurting spiritually
Think of your own prayer life in those three areas – both how you pray for yourself personally and how you pray for others. Which of those three areas is most often the focus of your prayers? I won’t ask you to answer that question out loud, but my guess is that for most of us we tend to pray more about physical needs and hurts than about emotional or spiritual issues. Certainly our church’s weekly prayer list is dominated by sickness and physical needs.
As we’ve seen, there is absolutely nothing wrong with praying for those kinds of needs. But we sure don’t want to be limited to just praying for physical needs either. And if we look to the examples of prayers in the Bible – especially the prayers of Jesus and Paul, we’ll find that they actually tend to focus a lot more on spiritual issues than physical issues for sure.
• Fervently
When James writes that Elijah prayed fervently, he employed a Hebraic expression that could literally be translated “Elijah prayed a prayer.”
The events that James is referring to are recorded in 1 Kings 17 and 18. At the end of chapter 18 God reveals to Elijah that He is going to bring rain upon the land after three and half years of drought. But even after He reveals that to Elijah, He commands Elijah to pray. And after Elijah prays, God commands him to go look toward the sea. Elijah saw nothing. Elijah was commanded to do that seven more times and finally after his last prayer a small cloud appeared in the sky. But a short time later the clouds became black and the winds and the rain came.
Obviously God didn’t need Elijah’s prayers in order to bring rain to the land. But God desired that Elijah be involved with what God was going to do through his prayer life. And God didn’t let Elijah off the hook with some haphazard prayer – He required that Elijah pray persistently and fervently.
Do you pray like that? I know I sure don’t do that very often, but I sure do want to be a man of prayer like James and Elijah. And my prayer is that you would desire to pray like that knowing that:
A mature disciple makes prayer the first response,
not the last resort
We’re going to respond to God’s Word this morning by putting into practice what we’ve learned. In just a moment the elders are going to come to the front of the auditorium and they will be available to pray with you and for you. During that time, we also invite you to pray individually and/or corporately. You can do that right where you sit or you can come up here to the front. You can pray alone or you can gather with others and pray for each other. As you do that, I want to encourage you to pray about all your hurts and the hurts of your brothers and sisters in Christ – emotional, physical and spiritual hurts. Cast your anxieties on Jesus because He cares for you.
