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James Session Nine 8.7.19 · HBCWestminster

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  We are closing out our study tonight. We are going to be in James chapter 5, verses 13 to 20. And as we close out studying on the book, I'm excited to see, I really am excited to see how God uses this in the lives of each of us as we consider how James has marked out really a road map for us to look at and consider what our lives are as they...
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  whether they reflect these truths and whether we are walking towards maturity or not, whether we are growing up or not. I pray that this is not just one small, short summer study that is quickly forgotten, but the compelling truth that James gives to us of how to see and walk towards maturity takes root in each of our hearts and we would be men who are patient.
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  in suffering, who practice truth, who allow the power of the Holy Spirit to give us control over our speech, and that we would be men who are peacemakers, not peacetakers. And that as trouble and suffering comes, we would be patient. As we again consider how this study relates to the overarching purpose of our men's ministry, I want to draw back to that again as we come to a close.
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  Our ministry here at church is called The Watchman. 1 Corinthians 16, 13 is the verse, the key verse. As we consider how this all ties together, as we are called to be watchmen of our homes and of our church, and then as we walk towards maturity as men, and as James has lined out, I pray that we will be equipped to be better watchmen, more mature watchmen, being able to stand firm.
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  in our faith which God has given us. Bob last week pointed out our need for patience in suffering and Tom's testimony beautifully depicted this reality that patience in suffering can and does reveal to us a faithful and caring God. This week as we close our study, we're going to look at the truth that the mature man is a man who prays.
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  A man who prays. It's kind of funny how things seem to work out at times. Last week, you would have thought that I planned Tom giving his testimony at the same time as Bob. I did not. Sunday, I taught on prayer in our Connect group, albeit a different vein or different idea of prayer that we studied on Sunday. But it's funny how tonight we find ourselves again studying prayer. So this evening, we're going to cover James 5.
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  13 through 20. We're going to look at three points. Three people or people groups that the mature man prays for. The mature man prays for those who suffer, those who lead, and those who wander. Let's read our passage and we'll get started. James 5.13 says this, Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray.
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  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.
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  To one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man 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.
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  Let's pray. Father in heaven, God, I pray.
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  that you would guide the words spoken tonight, that you would guide the discussion that takes place at the end. Lord God, may you be honored and glorified in the way that your word takes root in our hearts as we listen this evening. Guide my words, guide our study in your name. Amen. Prayer is one of those special blessings gifted to us by a holy and good God who in so giving to us bestows on us,
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  the incredible access of the throne room of God. As we bring our requests to him, we enter this throne room. In this section of James, he mentions prayer seven times. He mentions prayer seven times in eight verses. The mature man, as he is calling us to maturity, the mature man is a prayerful man.
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  brings us out beautifully in this section. Let's look at these first three verses, verses 13 through 16a, as we learn that the mature man prays for those who suffer. Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Now, there is an important distinction as we jump into these three verses that we need to make, and I believe James makes, as he says,
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  In verse 13, let him pray. And then he calls for others to pray for another man, for those who are sick. Here he mentions, does anyone suffering? Let him pray. Bob last week talked about suffering and being patient in it. James in his first chapter speaks to suffering and says that we ought to consider it joy as it tests our faith. And the distinction we must understand is we consider suffering and sickness.
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  must realize that sickness, and we'll bring this out a little bit later, is not always a result of sin. And here in verse 13, I do not believe that this suffering this person is taking on is a result of sin. Later we will see it is. In verse 13, the one suffering is not called on to confess, but to pray.
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  The answer, as Bob pointed out last week, to suffering is not to grumble, but to, in humility, to pray and make our requests known to God. Prayer does appear here, as this man is called on, as this person is called on to pray, to ask for relief from the suffering. Prayer does appear to be a method that the Lord uses to remove suffering, but prayer...
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  can and does at its core remind us of God's goodness and in turn give us the grace to endure cheerfully with joy on our hearts the trials or the suffering set before us. James 4.6 tells us that God gives us more and more grace. He gives more and more grace to the humble, not to the grumble.
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  Paul is an excellent example of this as he prayed over and over again. Brothers, he prayed over and over again for God to remove the thorn in his flesh. Did he not? He asked God to remove it. 2 Corinthians 12. Let's go over there. 2 Corinthians 12. Paul prays for the affliction to be removed, the thorn in his flesh to be removed, and yet God does not.
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  Remove it. And let's look at Paul's response to that answer from God as we see in 2 Corinthians 12. Verse 7-10 says this,
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  Conceded three times, I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness so that the power of Christ may rest upon me for the sake of Christ. Then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships.
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  persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. What was God's answer to Paul as he pleaded? No! Paul got a very clear answer from God. Based on that answer that God gave to Paul, what was his response? God's grace is sufficient. God's grace will abound all the more. He knew God's grace and power
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  perfected or made known or best displayed when we accept our need for him and rely on him more fully. This is what the Lord taught Paul as he prayed and asked for God to remove the thorn, and yet it stayed. As we pray in suffering, we can, brothers, pray expectantly, knowing that God will give us an answer.
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  person is called on from James, if anyone is suffering, let him pray. We can know that we will be given an answer from the Lord. It may not be the answer we want, but it will be the answer that is best for our souls. Knew this truth. Next, so we see that the suffering brother or the suffering believer is called to pray. Let's jump down and we see that next James speak.
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  speaks of praying for the sick. Verse 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. 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.
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  as we jump into these verses, must be careful not to build an entire theology on one passage of Scripture, thinking that, again, that sickness is always a result of sin, or that prayer will always remove sickness. But we can draw from this the right conclusion that we ought to be praying for one another. A mature man knows,
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  that it is God who heals the sick, and it is this God who can and will answer these requests alone according to His will. The mature man understands that these are but requests from us of the Lord God, and He will and does act in accordance with His divine purpose. In this church, in our church at Highland, we have seen God answer prayer in miraculous ways.
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  We have seen God come in and act in circumstances where there is no other explanation than God acted. We have seen this. We've seen this in our Connect Hour prayer time. We've seen this. We have shared this with each other. God has caused, has acted with divine intervention and answered prayer to change circumstances. We have also seen God say no or not yet.
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  To this, brothers, the mature man says thank you to his God in heaven as he knows, as Paul did, that God gives the grace for each of these answers. Here in James, James brings to us a topic of which can be largely exaggerated and can unfortunately be ignored as well as we look at him bringing out the fact that in this case,
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  Someone was sick because of sin. People can take this to mean that it is always the case where sickness is always caused by sin. Or we can completely ignore it and act like it never happens. Like God never causes affliction to wake us up. Here I want us to consider this portion with a careful consideration to the truth that only God knows the heart. And we must at times ask,
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  If we are a loving brother, we must ask our brother in Christ if there is unconfessed sin, continual, unrepentant sin that needs to be confessed out loud to the leadership of the church. Here, James tells us that sin can indeed be a cause for sickness. But again, that sickness is always caused by sin, but it can be brought about at times. And so we should ask ourselves,
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  first or our brother if there is sin which needs to be confessed and asked for forgiveness. Here I want to mention two of something in this section. We need to consider the Greek in this section because it bears importance to understanding this. When it says if he committed sins, this in the Greek, if translated directly from the Greek, would say something more like this. If he has been constantly sinning.
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  Constantly sinning. Brothers, we know the truth, the reality that we are all sinners every day, right? Here James is talking about a constant unrepentant heart, a continualness to sin that has led to this person who has become sick. If this is true, verse 16 tells us, confess and pray for one another that you may be healed.
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  Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another. To this statement, we must, I believe, ask a couple questions, a few questions. First, does this confession or prayer save or heal? Is it the prayer of the person praying that saves or heals? No, it is God alone, right? It is God's power. It is God's act that saves and heals. It is not us. God alone is the one.
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  who heals as He wills. What then is the function of this act of obedience as we are called to confess our sins to one another and pray for one another? I believe it is a cleansing act of which is offered up to God in prayerful obedience, submitting and confessing that we might not have unneeded barriers between us and God. This act brings us back into communion with...
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  Our Heavenly Father, as we confess, as we know from 1 John 1.9, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and what? Cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If you consider this, if you consider the sickness and you consider what can be the result, forgiveness of sins as we confess to one another and we confess to God.
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  I think we again are smack dab in the face with what is most important to God for us. Our physical comfort and healing or our spiritual comfort and healing. God will allow us to feel the repercussions of sin that we might confess to one another and most importantly to Him that we might be renewed, we might be restored to Him.
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  You can take some very practical applications from this section, these first three verses, I believe. We can take and know that this truth is real, that disobedience to God can actually lead to physical sickness. We see this in David's life in Psalm 32. We also see that sin affects the church. If the church leadership has to get involved, it obviously is affecting the church.
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  Sometimes we can lie to ourselves and think that sin only affects ourselves, but it never only includes one person. Third, there is both physical and spiritual healing that awaits each of us as we confess to our God in heaven. In verse 16, James writes, Therefore confess your sins to one another. We get the idea that this is to be a habit. A habit.
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  of which we can share openly with each other. Confessing and praying together should be a regular occurrence in the church. We ought to, our first response to somebody's confession of sin ought to be that we pray for them, not judge them. Confession and prayer together, brothers, is one of the most intimate and deep blessings we can share together as we realize
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  that we really are all sinners saved by grace, by the blood of Jesus Christ, through the grace which we don't deserve. As we experience this, as we share with one another, as we allow the barriers that sin wants to put up between us and God and us and the fellowship between each other, we can feel the freedom, we can feel that wash away from us as we confess to one another, realizing,
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  most likely that there's going to be a confession coming right back at us because we are all sinners. The mature man prays for those who suffer, and God hears. The mature man prays for those who lead. The second half of 16 through 18 says this, 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.
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  that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit. Meet Elijah next in this section. Elijah is given to us as an example, I believe, of a righteous man. A man whose prayers were mightily answered by God.
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  Now Elijah, you guys might remember, was a man who was used to confront an entire nation caught in sinful rebellion and idol worship. The nation was under the punishment of God for this disobedience and God used Elijah to confront and pray for the nation and the leaders. They had experienced a three and a half year drought because of the power of Elijah's prayer life. He prayed.
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  and it didn't rain for three years and six months. Then he prays for rain right after he confronts the prophets of Baal and challenges them on Mount Carmel. After God sends fire from heaven, consumes these offerings, he burns up the offering that Elijah had watered down. There's actually a moat around it that's filled with water, and God sends fire down. First time Elijah prays, God answers, sends fire from heaven.
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  Right after that, after he shows God's power in that situation, he prays for the drought to end. Right? Do you guys remember what happens? He prays. He sends his servant down to check. He's on the mountain. He sends him down. Do you guys remember how many times the servant had to go down and check? He goes down six times. And six times, there's nothing. Right? Seventh time, he comes up.
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  And he says, there's this little tiny cloud. And Elijah says, go run and tell Ahab that he better get going because otherwise he'll get caught in the rain and he won't get back to the palace. I can't help in this story of Elijah see a bit of God's hand in the way that he answers each of these prayers. So he prays first.
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  At the first prayer, God sends fire from heaven immediately, right? Consumes it all. Then, Elijah has to pray seven times before the Lord answers. Before he brings rain. And I don't know about you guys, but it is really easy for me at times to get a little conceited. To misplace my trust a little bit more in myself than in God.
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  Here I see God showing Elijah and the people that it is his will to answer prayer and his timing, his way. First time, right away. Second time, you're going to do this seven times. I want to point out also, as we see Elijah as a man who is obviously a man of powerful prayer, that he's also mentioned as a man who is a righteous man, I believe.
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  But sometimes when we read in Scripture and we read about these great men of faith, you read Hebrews 11, you see this hall of faith, and you read these stories like these stories about Elijah where he is depicted and we see he was an incredible man of prayer and an incredible man of faith. I mean, he sends the servant down right when there's just a tiny little cloud. He knows that God is going to answer now. But it hadn't started raining yet. He's an incredible man of faith.
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  It's easy for us, I think, sometimes to look at a man like Elijah and think, well, sure, God did amazing things through this prophet because he was a righteous man. It says so right here. The prayer of a righteous man has power. Elijah's prayer had incredible power. I'm not a righteous man. I'm not a good man. I'm not a man of immense faith. Take heart. This is why the Bible is amazing. Elijah...
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  goes from God acting in power powerfully, visually, miraculously, divine intervention, right? On two occurrences, back-to-back occurrences. And what happens next in Elijah's life? He runs away because he's scared. In fact, he runs away and he actually becomes basically depressed. It tells us in verse 17 of James, Elijah,
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  was a man with a nature like ours. Elijah was no different from you and I. A man who, through a gift that God gave him, the power of prayer, was able to do great things as he called on God and God answered. Brothers, may we never sell short the God of grace, the God who loves, the all-powerful, almighty God.
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  who calls on us to pray for Him to use that might for His glory, for His honor, for His praise. As I consider also what I think can be a powerful word picture as we see the drought that the nation was in as they strayed away from God and God uses Elijah to bring
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  reign in, nourish the land and cause it to bear fruit. Brothers, this evening, I don't know what kind of drought you might be in. I don't know what kind of drought you might be in this week, this month, this year, this decade, but I promise you this, the Lord sees it. The Lord is there and the Lord will provide just as He did for Elijah and for Paul, the grace to walk through.
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  Now the title of this section I said was The Mature Man Prays for the Leader. You might ask yourself a little bit why I came up with that. I believe as you read through, as Elijah is spoken of here, and you read through that section of Scripture that this is referencing, you see that Elijah was a man fervently in prayer.
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  for the nation, for the leaders, that they would repent, that they would come back to the Lord. He was faithful in prayer. Brothers, I think Elijah is a beautiful example of the fact that there is never an excuse for us to stop praying for those God has placed in leadership even if they are doing evil things. Ahab was an evil king. Jezebel was an evil queen. Elijah remained faithful to pray.
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  There's never an excuse for us to stop praying for those appointed as leaders in our church. Acts chapter 14 verse 23 says, And when they had appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting, they committed them to the Lord. May I encourage you, brothers, not only to be in prayer for each other, but prayer for your leaders, for us.
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  As pastors, as elders, brothers, we covet your prayers because the reality is we are sinners just like you guys. We haven't achieved anything. We are sinners saved by grace just as you. We need faithful people to pray for us. There's nothing more encouraging to the pastor's heart than somebody who is faithful in prayer saying,
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  I am praying for you. Brothers, we are called to pray for one another. May we not neglect that. We are called to pray for our leaders. Next, 19 and 20, James calls for us to pray for those who wander. My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know.
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  that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sin. James did not explicitly mention prayer in these two final verses, but the context of them and the results certainly implies that these results are from prayer.
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  Verses obviously deal with our ministry and care for a fellow brother, a fellow believer who has wandered, strayed from the truth. And this word wander used here holds in it an idea, an implication that is gradual, a gradual falling away. In Hebrews it talks about drifting away, moving away from God and His will.
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  In Galatians 6.1 it talks of a brother who is caught in transgression. One translation says overtaken in transgression. That holds in it a momentary lapse. One that is spotted and is a one time offense. Here the idea is a gradual over time wandering away. And this of course is of great concern to God and must be to each of us.
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  And should be most concerning to the offender themselves. The one who is wandering. Because it will bring about the discipline of the Lord. Hebrews chapter 11 tells us that. Now the reality of what causes this issue. I believe the reason why the wandering has happened. Is clear as we see in verse 19. If any of you wanders from the truth.
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  The truth, the reality is, brothers, that we wander away from God if we wander away from the truth. And we know from John 17, verse 17, we know what the truth is. It's God's Word. Thus, unless we stay close to the Word of God, we are capable of wandering. If you're ever curious why...
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  At each Thrive, at each Sunday, we open this book together. It's because we need it desperately in our lives. This is the very foundation of how we ought to live and will keep us from strain if we study it, if we apply it, if we seek to live it. There is no other source of truth that we can have apart from God's given Word.
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  And the reality is, brothers, that apart from God's truth guiding us, we are all in our hearts evil and sinners. And thus, without the guidance of God's good and perfect word, we will wander from it. Now, sometimes we can almost get excited about correcting somebody, right? Opportunity to knock somebody upside the head who's being an idiot.
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  That is not brotherly love. That is not what he's talking about here and it's not what Scripture tells us to do. If we are to help a brother who is wandering, to pray for that brother who is wandering, we must do so in love. 1 Peter 4.8 says, Above all, keep loving each other. And the end of that verse, Galatians 1, says to restore this...
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  A person who has been caught in sin in a spirit of gentleness. In the first epistle of John, he wrote and reminds us that if we don't love our brother, the love of God is not in us. Thus, brothers, as we pray for the wandering brother, the fellow believer, we must do so in love and much grace.
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  This brings us to the end of our study on James. We have considered the truths that the mature man is patient in trials, practices truth, has power over the tongue, is a peacemaker, not a peacetaker, is patient in suffering, and lastly, the mature man is a man of prayer. I've placed some questions on the table, some discussion questions that will cover all of these, really.
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  these topics as we end our study. I hope that you guys will not only spend time in discussion tonight, but that you actually take these home and consider these questions. I can't take credit for them. They are from Warren Worsley's study on James. At the end of it, he has a bunch of them and I stole all of them from him, including what is a very, very applicable.
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  Quote at the bottom, Brothers, we all cannot escape that we're going to grow older. It's not something we can change. I was sitting out there just before class started, and my daughter, Jane, was rubbing on my forehead a little bit, and I soon realized that she was following the wrinkles on my forehead. We're going to get old. We can't escape it. It's a fact of nature.
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  Spiritual maturity is something that we have to constantly, consistently strive after. James, I believe, has given us an incredible, incredible playbook that we can follow and consider as we seek that, as we seek the Lord's guidance in that. So I'm going to pray. You guys can discuss. I would really encourage you guys to take those.
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  Questions home. Let's pray. Father in heaven, God, I pray that this really would not be something that is just done for the summer, that we forget. God, I pray that these words that we've read as we've read through this book of James would really, Father, convict our hearts. Lord, make us aware of the areas where we need to grow, where we need to mature.
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  God, may we always see Your hand involved in our lives as we call out to You in many different situations in joy and praise and suffering. God, may we always be directed by Your Word and Your Word alone. May we always be humble enough to confess with one another that we would not have pride stand in the way. I pray that You would bless the discussion tonight and bless...
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  this teaching and the teachings that we have been through this summer, God, instill it on our hearts, make it part of our lives. In your name, amen.