WWUTT 297 Is Anyone Among You Sick?

In James 5 .15, he says the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick.

Now, it's possible that James is talking about physical sickness here, but what's more likely is he's talking about those who are spiritually sick when we understand the text.

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Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. Inching ever so close to the conclusion of our study of the book of James.

We're back in chapter 5 again today, verses 13 through 20. And as we wrap this up between today and tomorrow, we'll be reading that section both of these days to keep it fresh in our minds and also all of these things together in context.

James 5, starting at 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.

My brothers, if anyone among 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 will cover a multitude of sins.

Let's come back to verse 13 here where James says, is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray.

Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Yesterday I talked about how as these things are coming to a close,

James is bringing back some instructions that he had introduced earlier at the close of the letter.

And this is one of those places. Is anyone among you suffering? Remember what he had stated at the beginning of the letter, right after his introduction, he says, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

So here, if anyone is suffering, it is drawing to attention again, this understanding of rejoicing in the midst of various trials.

So let him pray. So this would be a kind of prayer that would be lifted up to God with thanksgiving, rejoicing in the midst of various trials.

So not a prayer that is anxious and hindered, but a prayer of thanksgiving in the midst of suffering, calling again to attention, the instruction that he gave at the start of the letter.

Paul says a very similar thing to the Philippians in Philippians chapter four. He says, rejoice in the

Lord always. I will say again, rejoice, a theme that is all over Paul's letter to the

Philippians. I think declarations of praise come up something like two dozen times over the course of these four short chapters.

Let your reasonableness be known to everyone, Paul says. The Lord is at hand.

We've heard something similar from James, didn't we? Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

And so it's in that same kind of context that James is saying here in James 5, 13, is anyone among you suffering?

Let him pray with thanksgiving as you are enduring this period of trial, be filled with gratitude to our

God. Yes, even grateful for this trial that we are enduring, knowing that God is using it to produce something in us.

Romans 8, 28 and 29. We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.

For those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.

So this trial that we are enduring, these things that we're going through, God is using these things to shape us more like Christ.

It's in this same chapter, Romans 8, that Paul says in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

So we do more than overcome a trial or a particular circumstance. We are able to seize that suffering, that trial, and use it to be shaped more like Christ.

Use it as an opportunity to give God the glory in the midst of our circumstances.

So when we know, when we see the full picture the way that God does, and we don't see it exactly the way that God does, now we see as though through a glass darkly, but soon we'll see face to face.

And then we will know as we are fully known, as Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 13. So we see kind of a fuzzy image.

We don't see the full picture clearly, but we know there's something there. And yet God has given to us his revealed will through his word.

So we are able to get kind of a sense of the way that God sees things from beginning to end.

The philosopher in Ecclesiastes, Solomon, he says that God has placed eternity in the hearts of men, but they cannot fathom what he has done from beginning to end.

So we have that longing for eternity, which God has placed in our hearts, though as finite creatures, we can't wrap our minds around the infinite.

So we need help. And we come to the scriptures and we're able to see as God has given promises and fulfilled those promises, we know that there are promises that are going to be fulfilled even in the future.

And so we can hold on to these opportunities, these circumstances that we're going through right now with hope, knowing that God is doing something ultimate with this.

There is some ultimate purpose here. So that's what I mean when I say when we see things the way that God sees them, we're not going to see them perfectly.

It's kind of a fuzzy image, but God has given us his word so that we know when he has promised something, he is faithful to fulfill it.

We see it the way that God sees it. And so when we know that God is using this trial and this circumstance to do something great, greater than we can even wrap our minds around, as God said to Habakkuk, watch and see for I'm about to do something in the nations that you would not have known even if I told you what it was.

So we can hold to this situation and this circumstance with hope, knowing that God is doing something great with it.

And in that understanding, we give God praise, even grateful for this trial that we are going through because it is all to the glory of God.

And God is is using this circumstance for his glory. Furthermore, he's using this circumstance for our good, for those who love

God and are called according to his purpose. Praise God. Praise God.

I know that was kind of muddled in my explanation of that, but I hope you were still able to follow me, that we are able to in our our deepest hurts and deepest trials give

God glory. Now, when we count it all joy, when we meet trials of various kinds, that doesn't mean we're not going to be sad.

It doesn't mean we're not going to be disappointed that we had a certain expectation of something and yet something else occurred.

And yet we can still rejoice and give God the glory, though what we had expected to happen is not exactly what happened.

We know that God's ways are higher than our ways and who can fathom what he has done from beginning to end.

So we can continue to give God praise, even though we don't see the picture fully.

We're still going to experience sadness. We're still going to experience sorrow. We're still going to experience happiness as well.

But our joy is not dependent upon our feelings. It's not about how we felt at a certain period of time because feelings are based on they're based on circumstances and they're based on the chemical balance that's going on in our brains at a particular moment in time.

But nothing can rob us of our joy. Happiness is cheap. It can be taken from us in an instant.

It can be a bad comment that we receive from somebody. It can be things not going our way.

You know, we can we can just have unrealistic expectations. And when those expectations are not met, it steals our happiness.

But if our joy is in the Lord, as the scriptures tell us, the joy of the Lord is our strength, then it cannot be robbed or taken from us.

Our joy is in God who has overcome the world.

So if anyone is suffering when we are in sorrow, when we are suffering, whether that is in our spirits or in our bodies, let him pray and let that prayer be filled with thanksgiving to our

God filled with joy. If is anyone cheerful, let him sing praise.

OK, so the the comment that James is making is anyone among you suffering comes back to the comment that he made at the start of the letter.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. The next comment is anyone cheerful.

Let him sing praise. This comes back to the instructions that he gave in Chapter three about taming the tongue.

No one can tame the tongue. Mankind has tamed every beast but cannot tame the tongue.

It is full of evil. It is a restless evil. And yet James goes on to say in Chapter three, who is wise and understanding among you by his good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom.

But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth.

This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.

For where jealousy and selfish ambition exists, there will be disorder and every vile practice.

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, then gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.

And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

So this is the person who is cheerful. Let him sing praise for it is beneficial and edifying to the entire body of Christ.

So here in this one verse, James has come back to an instruction that he gave at the start of the letter and one that he gave in the middle of the letter.

So you're seeing how things are coming back full circle at the end of the letter. Then we get to James 5, 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. Now, this can have a physical connotation to it.

So James is talking about when a person is physically ill, gather the elders of the church. This is the pastors of the church.

And by the way, notice this is a plurality that James is talking about here. When he mentions elder, he has mentioned the plurality of elders.

And I truly believe when we see instructions about eldership in the church given in the New Testament, we're talking about a plurality eldership.

And I think that churches, in order to be biblically functioning churches, biblically submissive and obedient to the authority of the word of God, they should have a plurality eldership.

That is truly something that I believe. Now, if your church that you attend just has a single pastor and deacons, but there isn't a plurality of elders, it's not that that church is totally unbiblical and you should leave it and go find a church that has plurality eldership.

But I think that you should try to encourage the leadership in the church toward plurality eldership.

Anyway, that's a tangent. I don't want to get on on that because it's kind of off topic from where we are. I'm just drawing attention to the fact that when

James mentions elders, it's plural. Let him call the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the

Lord. We actually did this for somebody. The elders in my church, we went to someone's home by their request who was experiencing a certain weakness in their flesh physically and wanted to have the elders come and pray over him.

And so we did and we came with oil, anointed his head with oil and prayed over him. And he even said, even though this young man was the one that requested us to come and pray for him, he said, you know,

I don't know why we do it this way, but it's the biblical instruction. So it's the way that I'm going to do it.

And so he asked us to anoint his head with oil and lay hands on him and pray for him. And so we did.

So this does have a physical connotation. I want to come back to that again. But I think that this is mostly having to do with spiritual sickness, not necessarily physical sickness, but spiritual sickness.

Now, why would I say that? Because I really think that's the context that's being presented. Is anyone among you sick?

Is anyone in sin? Because, you know, notice that the instruction here is, therefore, confess your sins to one another, as it says in verse 16, that you may be healed.

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.

So we're talking about a spiritual sickness here more so than we're talking about a physical sickness.

Again, I don't want to dismiss that physical sickness could be read into this because that's the literal reading here.

But I think that in context, more of what we're talking about has to do with being spiritually ill, a person who is not walking in righteousness, but a person who has been indulging in sin.

And they perhaps might even be getting physically ill because of the sins that they have.

So if we're talking about physical sickness here, it could be a physical sickness that has been brought on by sin.

Now, that doesn't mean that every sickness has to do with a person's sin.

All sickness is the result of sin because we live in a fallen world that has been subjected to futility because of sin, as Paul talks about in Romans chapter eight.

But that doesn't mean that a person who gets sick is guilty of sin.

And that's why they're sick. But there still could be that possibility that the reason they're sick is because of sin.

Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 11. When the Corinthians were misusing the

Lord's Supper, Paul says, this is why some of you have gotten sick and some of you have even died because you're misusing the

Lord's table for your own selfish means. And so there are people who do get sick because they are living in unrepentant sin.

There's a story in my church. This happened before I got here. But there was a man in our church that had started in on an affair with another woman.

He was married, had kids, but he decided to leave his wife and children for this other woman.

There were some leaders in my church that went to him and pleaded with him to leave the woman that he was having an affair with and return to his wife and children.

But he wouldn't do it. It was a very short period of time after all of this had transpired, like in a matter of weeks or months, that he got deathly ill, like on his deathbed, was in the hospital, was given very little chance of survival.

And the men of the church went to him again in his hospital room and said, we believe the reason you're sick is because of this affair that you are in was the epitome of health until he came into this affair and now found himself on a hospital bed knocking on death's door.

And so these men of the church came to him and said, we're asking you to repent of this sin, to leave this woman, be reconciled with your wife and with your children.

But the man continued to reject this repentance that they were calling him to.

And he died there in that hospital. That's a story that is that is in our church of a man who had gotten sick, likely because of his sin and the men of the church pleading with him to repent of this sin and return to his wife and his children.

And yet he wouldn't do it. And it killed him. So there are sicknesses that can occur in the human body because of a spiritual sickness, because we are sinful and refuse to repent of those sins.

So be discerning about these things. Call for the elders of the church because they are the ones who have the authority administering the word of God.

And as they are the counselors in the church, they might be able to come to you and verify or perhaps evaluate whether or not the sickness that you have could be the result of sin.

Confess your sins to those men so that they might be able to guide you biblically, according to what the scripture says about righteousness and about repenting of sin and what it is the

Lord has commanded us to do so that you might be grieved over that sin. Repent of it, pray and ask that the

Lord would cleanse you. And then you have this this sort of like a it's sort of like a rebaptism, but not really.

You don't need to be baptized again because you are already baptized once. Jesus talks about this with his disciples when he washes their feet in John chapter 12.

You've already been cleansed once, but not your feet. Your feet need to be washed. So as you've already been baptized once, you don't need to be baptized again.

But there's this this ritual of this anointing with oil that kind of symbolizes being cleansed again.

And so as the elders anoint you with oil in this way, cleansing you of sin and leading you back to the path of righteousness.

If anyone among 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 will cover over a multitude of sins.

We're going to talk about this some more tomorrow as we come back to our study of James chapter 5 verses 13 through 20.

But in what it is that we've looked at today and how we have expounded upon what

James has said here, let us examine our hearts before the Lord to know that we are walking in holiness, not sinfulness.

And if there is any sinful way in us, let it be sought out so that we would be convicted of those sins and be able to repent before the

Lord and worship in a right way so that our prayers would not be hindered, our praises would not be hindered, but we would be lifting up right worship before the

Lord. As David says in Psalm 19, the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.

The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the

Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.

Moreover, by them is your servant warned. In keeping them, there is great reward.

Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins.

Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless and innocent of great transgression.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight.