Pray

James 5:13–18 | Stefan Van der Merwe

Yesterday while I was preparing the sermon Hensie came kind of dancing into the room singing and asking me if I wanted to drink something…I asked for tea. She was dancing and singing to Phil Wickham’s “House of the Lord”.

The first lines of the songs go as follows…

There’s joy in the house of the Lord

There’s joy in the house of the Lord today

And we won’t be quiet

We shout out Your praise

This particularly struck me because even though today’s passage and sermon are mostly on prayer the second verse of our passage today says the following:

“Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise.

SO, let’s change the pattern of the service today and if you are happy today let’s sing together another song before the sermon continues.

Since we celebrated passover recently, let us sing again together “My Redeemer Lives”

All right, did you enjoy that?

Singing can be a very strong expression of worship and communication with God and I think it is definitely worthwhile noticing the words we sing and the passion that goes with it!

Let’s continue by reading our whole passage today,

13 Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise.

14 Is 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.

15 And 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.

16 Therefore, 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.

17 Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.

18 Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.

Apart therefore from the second part of verse 13 about singing songs of praise when we are happy the emphasis in this passage is on prayer!

In this passage apostle James gives us three reasons why we should pray.

- When we are in trouble

- Then you are sick

- If you have sinned

1. PRAY WHEN YOU ARE IN TROUBLE

When I first read this, I was saying to myself, well yea, that goes without saying that we often do pray when we are in trouble; but then again, do we?

Just thinking back on my own experience in life I realise that prayer is NOT always the first thing that comes to mind when we are in trouble.

Federal aviation inspectors say that when they listen to the final words of airline pilots just before a crash, they frequently hear profanity. The very last words recorded on tape and preserved in the black box are often not prayers but curses.

Granted that trouble comes in many forms, there are often many ways we can react to the troubles we are facing, and prayer is often not very high on the list of actions we take.

As a matter of fact, when we are in trouble many people often first:

- Seek a guilty party or blame someone else for their troubles (or sickness/sins which we will speak about a little later)

- Act rash or speak to quickly without thinking

- Others lie

- Ignore the problems

- Try to eat their problems away

- Sleep it away

The list can go on….

As Christians, we have a different way of reacting to the troubles we face.

James says, PRAY!

The bible is packed with examples of prayers like these:

Just think about…

- Jonah in the fish

“In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry.” (Jonah 2:2)

- Hannah childless pouring her heart out before God

“In her deep anguish Hannah prayed to the Lord, weeping bitterly.” (1 Samuel 1:10)

- King David often prayed in times of distress

“When I was in distress, I sought the Lord” (Psalm 77:2)

- Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane

“And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground”. (Luke 22:44)

So why don’t people instinctively pray when they’re in trouble?

If you don’t turn to God when tragedy strikes, it’s probably one of two reasons:

- either you don’t believe he can help so you just don’t ask

- or you’re not in the habit of going to him under normal circumstances, so when the pressure is on, you revert back to old habits.

God expects you to call upon him when you’re in trouble. You might say to your children, “If you have any trouble, stop and call me.” You want them to rely on you when they’re in trouble. Your heavenly Father wants you to rely on him when you’re in a crisis!

2. PRAY WHEN YOU ARE SICK

In our passage we read:

· 14 Is 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.

o 5 And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up.

Although prayer is for many people a very personal thing, it is clear from this passage that prayer is not only restricted to your own prayers. I cannot remember the countless times that I felt sick or unwell, that I didn’t even think about asking people in the church to pray for me. Praying on your own to God for healing is not wrong, but we have an added dimension to prayer that we should not ignore.

Apostle James wants to remind us that we are part of a family and that the family cares for each other even when we are sick. The original Greek word here for “sick” (Κακοπαθεῖ) comes from the base word “Κακοs” with means bad. The idea here is that the person is really sick, but I do not think that James meant here either to say that we only need to pray for the really sick people, but the emphasis is on prayer for each other in our times of sickness.

James specifically mentions the elders (or pastors) of the church here and I think this is important because as pastors (me and Caleb) it is not only part of our responsibility to care for the church but also our desire to do that and it certainly involves prayer for the sick. Apostle Paul writes to the church elders (pastors) in Ephesus the following:

“Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God,[a] which he bought with his own blood.” (Acts 20:28)

This is a responsibility we take seriously, and you are always welcome to contact us to pray for you for healing.

This passage also specifically mentions using oil when praying for the sick person. Although this is a practice some churches have up until today, this passage is actually is unique because nowhere else in the new Testament is the practice of oil mentioned when praying for the sick. We don’t find it in the book of Acts or in any of Paul’s writings. Neither did John mentioned the practice or even Peter anywhere. Not even in the first book he wrote that speaks a lot about suffering. This, however, does not mean that using oil today is wrong when we pray for the sick, but the absence of it being mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament, does tell us that it was not the main focus was not on the oil when praying for the sick.

In verse 15 we do however find the more important emphasis. Let’s read it:

And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. (James 5:15)

What is the emphasis here? — FAITH!

In South Africa we have a people group called the Zulus. Big strong people. Sangomas (or witch doctors), are highly respected healers among the Zulu people of South Africa who diagnoses, prescribes, and often performs the rituals to heal a person physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. The sangoma may address all of these realms in the healing process, which usually involves divination, herbal medicine, and specific customized rituals to cure illness and restore well-being.

In Zulu tradition, God is rarely involved in human affairs and is not a common cause of illness (isifo). However, God delegated many administrative functions to the ancestors (Amadlozi), who, therefore, are actively and constantly involved in the world of the living. As a result, they are frequently suspected of being responsible for sending isifo to the living.

As Christians we serve a God that is truly involved in our human affairs and not only is He involved, but He is also the source of our healing. When we pray for healing it is not the prayer that heals, but God himself. James says: “The Lord will raise him up”. James uses resurrection language here, which is an emphasis I believe that tells us that nothing is impossible for God. Do we believe that when we pray?

3. PRAY WHEN YOU HAVE SINNED

Today we will be celebrating the Lord’s supper together and in the many years that I have been serving God’s people in the church I have often seen people not participating in the Lord’s supper.

In 1 Corinthians the 11 chapter Paul taught the church there the following principle:

Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. (1 Cor 11:28)

He even says a few verses later that

“..many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. 31 But if we were more discerning with regard to ourselves, we would not come under such judgment. (1 Cor 11:30–31)

From these verses it is clear that participating in the Lord’s supper should always be done from a position of “one who’s been forgiven”. Participating in the Lord’s supper if you know there is sin in your life that you have not confessed before God is what the bible calls unworthy participation and may even lead to sickness and in the case of the Corinthians church even to death of some.

But this is what I don’t get. Why, if we know that we have sinned are we so slow to pray and ask God for forgiveness?

Us, being worthy enough to participate in the Lord’s supper does not come from us but it comes from God who has made us worthy by forgiving our sins when we ask Him to do it.

We read in James today:

· If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. 16

Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. (James 5:15b-16)

The promise in the verse is not to be taken lightly! Forgiveness of sins are available to all who pray and ask God for forgiveness. The sooner we ask God for forgiveness the quicker we are forgiven, but for us as people it is not always that easy.

Perhaps that is also the reason why James writes here:

Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed

It probably is easier to confess in the presence of someone that you can see instead of God that you cannot see (I get it), but we must never forget that sin is first and foremost a violation of God’s law and not mans.

Whether you therefore confess your sins before God in solemn prayer or confess your sins in prayer to God in the presence of someone else is not that important. What is more important is that these prayers get made! Do not delay confessing your sins. Perhaps God is even speaking to you right at this moment about a certain sin in your life. Don’t let it slide. Confess it today before the Lord in prayer.

4. PRAY POWERFULLY AND EFFECTIVELY

The last thing James mentions in our passage today is a recipe for powerful and effective prayer. Not sure about you, but I would love for my prayers to be both powerful and effective.

James uses the prophet Elijah as an example for us. He says:

17 Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.

18 Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.

These prayers certainly had a massive impact not only on his life, but on all the people of his generation and yet James says he was “a man just like us”.

So, what made his prayers so powerful and effective?

James answers this question clearly for us. He wrote:

“The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”

This is very important, because if you are ever to experience powerful and effective prayer, there is no other recipe than this.

You might think that faith is the only key to effective prayer and the bible does teach us that without faith it is impossible to please God and also teaches us that a person with no faith must not expect to receive anything from God BUT James wants us to understand a deeper concept here.

He calls it righteousness.

The Mirriam-Webster dictionary gives us the following definition of righteousness:

“acting in accord with divine or moral law : free from guilt or sin”.

Let us also read Phillippians 3:9

“…not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in[a] Christ — the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.”

Man can only become righteous if he is free from sin, and the only way man can be free from sin is to find forgiveness from sin from God alone that can forgive the sins of man.

As Christians we believe in Christ Jesus (the one who is without sin) that took upon himself the sins of the world and died on a cross in our place so that we can have the opportunity to be free from the power of sin and therefore be considered righteous.

Powerful and effective prayer is therefore only possible if we have:

• Put our faith in Christ as Redeemer and
• Asked Him to forgive your sins!