Finishing the Book of James, James 5, 12 20

What up, Witton fam? We are going to finish the Book of James, finally, today, but before we do that, a couple little updates.

We have a Witton app, finally! We have Witton Baptist Church Memphis, we have our own app, if you would download that, it doesn't matter if you're a member here, if you're from here, it doesn't matter where you're at.

Get the app, look through, that's going to try to be one of our main channels of communication here.

You'll find a bunch of our media stuff, podcasts, previous videos, links to YouTube, sermon notes, events, all types of stuff on there.

Anyone can download it, of course. So Witton app is trying to push that to try to help get the message out a little better.

Okay, so we left off, actually, in verse 7, but I'm going to do a live

Bible study of verses 7 -11 of James 5, because it's probably one of my favorite passages of the

Book of James. So we're actually going to skip verse 7 -11, at some point soon I'm going to do a live

Bible study on that. So for today, we're going to finish 12 -20, okay? So let's read it first, and then let's get to work.

But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any oath, but let your yes be yes and your no be no, so that you might not fall under condemnation.

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 just 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 the heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit. My brothers, if any one of you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.

All right, so let's take a look at what we got. Again, for those of you that are perceptive, we skipped verse 7 through 11.

I'm going to do a Facebook Live Bible study on that soon. So, first off, swearing.

Not so much talking about bad words here, we're more talking about oath -making. While this is not a universal ban of all types of oaths, as the

Bible is full of rightly done oaths, this is a ban on flippantly making an oath, okay?

On just saying, yeah, I swear, blah -ba -dee -blah -ba -dee -bloo. James seems to be, once again, referencing back to the

Sermon on the Mount from Matthew chapter 5, verse 33 through 37, where Jesus said something very similar about, let your yes be yes and your no be no.

This is the second time we've seen in James where it seems that he's referenced the Sermon on the Mount. Since James was written almost assuredly before the book of Matthew was, as James may be the first New Testament book written, could be written in the 40s and Matthew may not be until the late 50s, early 60s, what that tells us is it's very possible

James could have been there at the Sermon on the Mount in Galilee. He was not a believer then, but he is now.

Jesus appeared to him after the resurrection. What's amazing is

God may be using something James heard when he was an unbeliever and was kind of like, psh, whatever, and now using it to help him write the book of James.

Let your yes be yes and your no be no. So think about this this way. You should live your life so honestly, with so much integrity, with so much reliability and trustworthiness that you shouldn't have to say, oh,

I swear, I make an oath all the time. You should be able to just say yes. And it's as if you've making an oath, but just by saying yes, because you live your life so honestly that when you say yes,

I'll be there or yes, I'll do that. It will be done. When you say no, it won't be. In other words, it's as if you are making an oath just by letting your yes be yes and your no be no.

That's how honestly you live your life. That's what God is calling us to do. A little side note here, this was the verse when

I was in college that convicted me to quit being late all the time. Now, I know that may sound strange to some of you, but I mean, let your yes be yes and your no be no.

If I say I'm going to be there at this time, I need to be honest about that. I need to be truthful about that. This verse is what really helped me quit being so selfish about being late all the time and consider other people's time as well.

All right. Now, section 13 through 18. Whether we see that someone is sick, well, sad, happy, their focus and direction should be on God, either as their helper or their healer, sustainer of joy.

Kind of a pretty cool little section here. Is anyone among you suffering? Let them pray.

Is anyone cheerful? Let them sing praise. This right here, this is why we at Witten anoint people when they come forward for healing.

Not because it's any magic oil or special holy sanctified, because God said so.

It's really what it boils down to. Come forward. We anoint their head with oil. We pray over them because the

Bible tells us to. It's really that simple. There's no mystical reason.

We shouldn't read the prayer of faith as any unusual prayer or specific type of prayer, but more as a mode of prayer, as in a prayer of faith, a faithful prayer, believing what you say.

When someone comes forward and is sick, we should pray that God will heal him or her, and it's up to God if he does or not.

We should believe that God will, that he can and he will. Sometimes illness is caused by a person's specific sin, like in 1

Corinthians 11. Sometimes it's not owing anything at all that person did wrong, but simply a result of a fallen sinful world.

In either case, there is still a divine purpose for the suffering. In either case, there's a divine purpose for the suffering.

Just for a moment, let's look over at John chapter 9. This is

Jesus. Jesus, as he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth, and his disciples asked him, Rabbi, whose sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

Jesus answered, it is not that this man's sin or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

The works, erga of theu, the works of God might be displayed in him.

So, in other words, Jesus said a little bit, is this guy blind because of his sin or his parents' sin?

And Jesus says, neither. It's Allah, it's for the purpose so that, hinnah, my favorite

Greek word. Why is he blind? Blind so that the works of God would be bannerothe, would be shown, displayed, light would be shown in him.

So the reason he's blind, he has been born blind since birth. He's been blind this whole time, his whole life, so that the works of God could be shown in him.

Guys, do you think that blind man knew what was the purpose of his blindness growing up during that suffering?

No, God didn't reveal it to him until later in life. Sometimes God never reveals it to us, it's for a future generation, but we should trust that God always has a plan, even when we can't see it, even when we can't see it.

Confession of your sin to a priest is not required by the

Bible. We confess our sins one to another, one to another, to other believers.

This is part of our healing process. Now pay attention, part of our healing process is confessing our sins one to another and praying for one another.

This is how God set it up, guys, spiritual growth. If you believe that your sanctification, that your spiritual life, that your

Christianity is between you and God, the problem is God disagrees with that.

He set it up to be a corporate body of believers, an entire body of Christ. The man says in his heart,

X, Y, and Z, but there's counsel, there's wisdom in the counsel of many. A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

Bear one another's burdens, lift each other up, do not forsake the assembling of ourselves.

Confess your faults one to another. The Bible is very clear on this. Christianity was never meant to be a gist between you and God.

God does not see it that way. You disagree with God if you see it that way. Confession to each other is a biblical practice.

It's part of our healing, not just prayer. Notice prayer is so powerful because we serve such a powerful

God. Elijah was a man just like us. Yes, he was an Old Testament prophet, but he prayed and God did not have rain fall on the land for three and a half years.

Prayer is powerful, not because of the man praying, because of who we are praying to. My brothers, if any one of you wanders from the truth, this could be as far as someone apostatizing, saying,

I no longer believe, or it could be someone saying, someone just being in rebellion.

When one wanders from the truth, Eleus, and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death, and will cover a multitude of sins.

Even if in that wandering, if there's genuine repentance and a return to the fold, God will forgive those sins.

Now, of course, this is not saying that the believer who brings correction to this person has the power to save that person.

But all of us, not just pastors, are to try to bring back the wandering sheep to the fold.

This is why, guys, this is why whenever someone says, well, I don't want to judge them.

Guys, we're supposed to judge believers. That's what the Bible says, not on the outside, but on the inside.

And you're not judging them as if you are the final judge. We covered this earlier. You're judging them in the sense of this is what the book says.

I don't make the rules. I just declare them. And your actions are not living up to the standard you're claiming to live by.

The way you're living your life is not lining up with what you're saying. Guys, if you love somebody, you will do that because you're trying to save their soul from death and you can't do the saving.

You're trying to be the light, the tool God used to show them the truth. That's the purpose of it.

So, minus one Facebook live of verse 7 through 11, we have finally finished the book of James.

OK, in our in -person Bible study, we will be finishing prayer this coming

Sunday. So we've got to catch up here because we've got a couple of weeks on prayer and then we're done with that.

We're starting the book of Matthew. Love you guys, as always. Like, share, subscribe, make comments, suggestions.

I'm open to opinions. Don't forget the new Witton app. Download that. Witton Baptist Church, Memphis.