The Prayer of the Righteous - The Letter of James - James 5:13-18

Mar 3, 2024 • Andrey Bulanov

Text: James 5:13-18

Outline:

1. The Power of Prayer in Suffering

2. The Power of Prayer in Joy

3. The Power of Prayer in Sickness

4. The Power of Prayer in Battling Sin

Scripture passages:

• James 5:13-18

• Psalm 16:11

• Mark 16:13

• John 14:12-14

• 1 Corinthians 11:28-30

Discussion Questions:

• What is the pathway through which James tries to teach us the power of prayer?

◦ Just do it more!

• What stops us from turning to prayer more consistently and automatically in trouble and blessing?

• What role do pastors play in prayer and what role does the rest of the church play? Is there a difference?

• Why pray for healing if we know God doesn't always heal?

• What is the point of confessing our sins? What is the use if God already forgave our sins?

• How does our understanding of justification and total forgiveness by faith alone help us also understand God's constant and present power in our lives, available through prayer?

Application Questions:

• What is our automatic reaction in difficulty or joy?

• Do you view God as an ever present Father who is ready to hear, to help and to heal?

◦ Our understanding of justification leads us to see God's grace and power as always present in our lives to work, and helps us see prayer as an ever present power.

• Does your spiritual life regularly and constantly depend on the prayers of others around you?

• Are you battling sin alone?

• Are you rooted in the fact that Jesus as died for your sin once and for all - and that he has not only given you forgiveness, but also the church - to hold you up and give you victory over sin?

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We come back to the final verses in our study of James.

the epistles often finish on a note of prayer

James finishes with a section on prayer that is longer than others.

Also, we see here that he comes full circle to where he started. He started the epistle with asking God for help in hard times, and he essentially finishes with that.

The point that he leads everything to, the core truth that James wants to leave us with here is the essential and powerful nature of prayer in our lives.

"the prayer of the righteous person is very powerful in its effect."

This is where he leads everything.

He lists many different situations in life and he is not so much proving as he is highlighting - that one of the most important and powerful things we can do in these circumstances is to pray.

As we approach this passage, the question that I want to challenge you with is - when you think of prayer, do you think of power?

This is what James is trying to highlight about it here.

The prayer of the righteous person, the person who is depending on God, leaning in and trusting in GOD's strength and salvation - even though that person may FEEL very weak in that moment - his prayer carries great power.

Lets see how that idea works its way in the text.

1. The power of prayer in suffering

13 Is anyone among you suffering?

He should pray.

mental, physical, relational, financial, spiritual, emotional....

"suffering" - a very broad word that carries many different situations in life

Thats pretty much all of us isn't it?

The temptation in difficult is to try to solve it yourself or to be frustrated and angry - maybe have bitterness as to why God allowed this to happen.

We tend to get locked into our situations in our minds

James says, the knee jerk reaction to this should be prayer.

Especially when our trails persist - we may think - what is the point?

We see the illustration of the power of prayer in our difficulty in Psalm 18 - notice the massive and dramatic response of God to the call for help.

Its interesting.

Wouldn't it be easier for God not to allow David to fall into such terrible situations?

Efficiency is not God's biggest value.

God loves to save his people in need

God loves to strengthen us and empower us through the challenges we face

God loves to work powerfully in a thousand ways through our trails - but James says its essential that you PRAY!

It doesn't have to be elaborate

"Jesus please help"

"Father..."

This needs to be our deeply engraved habit of heart.

Paul tells us in Romans that in our prayers in the midst of difficulty - sometimes we don't know what to say but we come to God and the Spirit of God in us INTERCEDES for us with groanings too deep for words - isn't that amazing??

There is great power in our prayers in the times we feel most weak.

Is anyone suffering? pray!

2. The power of prayer in joy

"is anyone cheerful? He should sing praises"

The equally important reminder to us is that in the midst of our peace and joy - we must turn to God in praise!

When all is well we have a tendency to focus on ourselves and our good things - and we neglect to take the next and valuable step of praising God for all he gives.

Joe Rigney in his book, "The things of Earth" speaks of a "godward orientation" of the heart and mind that is critical for us to cultivate.

This is because the true end of all our joys is God himself

And if we fail to take the next step of delighting in God's goodness in the midst of our blessings - we actually miss out on the best part of the joy.

Our joy is so much more grounded and solid when it is planted on an awareness that all good things come from him.

Psalm 16:11

You reveal the path of life to me;

in your presence is abundant joy;

at your right hand are eternal pleasures.

When our joy is detached from God and his presence it becomes very fickle and unstable.

When our joy is brought into his presence it is secured and multiplied.

We go from these simple and straight forward exhortations to a much more detailed and easily misunderstood text -

3. The power of prayer in sickness

14 Is anyone among you sick? He should call for the elders of the church, and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 The prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up; if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

we should pray in hardships, we should praise in joy.

But physical sickness is an experience of special need and vulnerability.

More than anything else, our physicality reminds us of our weakness.

You can be living life to the fullness, not a care in the world - and then you are seized with sudden and crippling abdominal pain - and all your power is gone. You are curled up in a ball, hanging on desperately - anxiety and fear washing in with the pain - wondering what is going on.

"is anyone among you sick?"

I think its pretty clear that James is referring here to physical sickness or illness - some people try to deal with the complexity of this passage by making it into a spiritual sickness - then it makes it easier to explain how the elders pray for healing.

I think its clear he's talking about physical illness from the language he uses here

Just as physical illness puts us in a place of special vulnerability before God it also puts us in need of others - and here James opens the door to addressing that a HUGE aspect of our prayer life NEEDs to be our dependence upon the prayers of OTHERS for us.

Here he starts out with the prayer of the pastors for a sick person but clearly he expands on from there to highlight the power of the church praying for each other.

There are a few big ways this passage is misunderstood - and all of them are surrounding the prayer and anointing with oil - and the healing of the sick person.

The Roman Catholic Church uses this passage as a basis for the ritual of the priest anointing a person who is about to die with oil as preparation for death.

They believe that the act in and of itself carries some power.

This text does not support this idea because there is nothing here about death - actually the opposite - healing.

What do we make of this whole practice of anointing with oil?

This practice is mentioned here and only one other place in the NT - Mark 6:13

"13 They drove out many demons, anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.

The practice of anointing with oil is pretty common in the OT - as a sign of something or someone being set apart for God's special attention or special purpose. They did this with the priests in the OT.

Both James and Mark extend this practice to the NT as an expression of prayer and God's special attention to a person in physical suffering.

Some people may say "Why isn't this a more common practice for us today?"

James says, "If you are sick, you can call the elders of the church" - he doesn't say that the pastors need to run around town to every person with a cough anointing them with oil and praying for them.

This is an area of life where the church is called to invite the ministry of the pastors in times of significant suffering and need.

"But why the oil? Why can't the pastors pray without the oil?"

Sure they can, and James calls the whole church to pray for each other in the next verse. The practice of anointing with oil is a practice that symbolizes a special need and a special attention that the pastors of the church are bringing to the physical need of the person to God's healing work.

Its like communion - is the bread and wine a reminder of the body and blood of Christ? Then why can't we just remember and pray, why do we need all this bread and wine? Its a practice God has instituted which, when done in faith and obedience invites and brings God's presence and work in a special way.

What about the healing part?

James says "the prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up..."

A lot of misunderstanding about this - claiming if you just have enough faith - you will be healed. Then if you don't get healed, you didn't have enough faith.

Notice its technically talking about the prayer of faith of the pastors not the person -

Does God always heal everyone who truly believes in him?

• Yes! - but on his timing

God is working throughout all history to heal and restore ALL that is broken. He is a healer. He never stops working in our lives his gracious process of healing us spiritually, emotionally, physically. But there is a process he is working on. There is a timeline that we don't always catch, that we may struggle with.

This points to the key phrase here -

What is the "prayer of faith" and how does God bring healing?

John 14:12-14

12 “Truly I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do. And he will do even greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

It is also clear in the NT that its not Jesus' plan to heal every single ailment or sickness that his people experience RIGHT AWAY - take Paul in 2 Corinthians 12 - THREE times he prayed he would take away his pain.

If you ask anything in my name i will do it - the prayer of faith will save the sick person...

I think this is a clear practice that our prayer in times of need - such as this prayer for the sick - is a prayer that ASKES BOLDLY for healing - but at the same time, comes with the heart that is totally submitted to and seeking GOD's will and God's perfect purposes IN that struggle.

Jesus himself models in the garden this exact thing - let this cup pass before me, BUT NOT MY WILL but yours be done.

Sometimes God heals now. Sometimes he heals later. ALWAYS he answers prayer in faith and builds up his people who come to him for help.

The prayer of the righteous person has great power.

4. The power of prayer in battling sin.

"....is he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed..."

Is all sickness the result of sin?

• Yes! But not necessarily your own....

James inserts a very important qualifier here "IF he has sinned..."

All the way back to the times of Job, we have a tendency to assume that if something bad is happening in your life - its because you have sinned and cursed yourself.

James says, IF - meaning the person suffering in sickness may well have NOTHING to do with sin in his life.

But then again it MIGHT.

When there is persistent sin in our lives God will use a variety of means to get it out.

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 11:28-30

28 Let a person examine himself; in this way let him eat the bread and drink from the cup. 29 For whoever eats and drinks without recognizing the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. 30 This is why many are sick and ill among you, and many have fallen asleep.

James says this prayer and this illness may be the occasion for exposing and healing from sin, which is so much more dangerous than physical illness.

And that brings him to address the whole church together -

"therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous person is very powerful in its effect..."

This passage seems to be one sadly lost on many christians today - both praying for the sick and confessing our sins. Maybe we are too afraid of associating with practices in the roman catholic or orthodox churches - but the instructions here are very plain and clear.

It is a healthy part of the normal christian life to live in such community with saints around us that we are regularly bringing our struggles, failures and sins to another another - not so that we may just talk and gossip or even try to think of our own solutions - but that we might PRAY for one another.

It is the prayer of the saints for one another, addressing the specific struggles and sins - that carries GREAT POWER to restore, heal and build up our faith.

This also answers the question - if Jesus already forgave us our sins, why do we need to confess them?

TO BE CLEAR - the church does not dispense the forgiveness of sin.

God grants us forgiveness from his grace. Jesus came into our world and lived the life we could not live - so that at the end of it, HE could stand condemned like a sinner - so that he could stand before God to receive all the punishment that was due to us for our sins. HE came to pay our infinite death with his infinite sacrifice.

We are sinners and first and foremost we need forgiveness for our sins. We need to be cleared of our guilt. We need our punishment removed.

This gift of total and complete forgiveness is given to EVERYONE who humbly acknowledges their sin, their desperate need of God's grace and forgiveness, and turns to surrender to Jesus as their one and only Master and King.

"by grace you are saved, though faith - and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, so that no one may boast!"

Jesus gives forgiveness to all who believe - and no one can take that away.

But as you receive his forgiveness, you now begin on a path of GROWTH in practical godliness where the remaining habits of sin are cleaned out from your life.

THIS is something that church is given to help you in.

This is why we are called to confess our sins and struggles, to pray for one another, and to strengthen each other to grow in practicing the new life that we are ALREADY GIVEN.

How does this whole confessing sin work?

• We should regularly depend upon the prayers of christians in our church for strength in our struggles

• We should be regularly sharing more general sins and struggles in our groups and ask for prayer

◦ example

• We should regularly confess more specific sins and struggles to a trusted and close few people in our lives so that they might pray for us and keep our struggles private

This is very new for some who never did it. But if you are struggling with your sins alone and in total isolation, you should not be surprised to find that these struggles present and sometimes grow over the years - you are closing yourself off from a key source of spiritual power.