Prayer and Care

[0:00] Well, I some time ago got a penknife and received it as a present. and I've come to realise that a penknife is an extremely useful thing in nearly any and every situation.

[0:16] Whenever we face a DIY dilemma in our home, the boys immediately know that when I say what do we need, we need a penknife.

[0:56] Their eyes widen knowingly a little bit as they look forward to us using the penknife. That's what we need and so we use it in lots of different situations. And as James draws this letter to a close, what James wants us to realise is how useful prayer is in any and every situation.

[1:19] How we need it and how we need to use it. And it's not even that it's just useful, James says. It's actually powerful.

[1:30] So at the end of verse 16 he says, The prayer of a righteous person, the prayer of somebody who knows and loves the Lord Jesus and has been declared righteous. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

[1:46] And so time and again throughout this passage, James draws our attention to prayer. In verse 13 he says, let them pray. In verse 14 he says, pray over them.

[1:59] In verse 15 he says, the prayer offered in faith. In verse 16 he says, pray for each other. Again in verse 16 he says, the prayer of a righteous person.

[2:10] In verse 17 he says that Elijah prayed earnestly. In verse 18 he says, he prayed and the heavens gave rain and the earth produced its crops.

[2:23] And so James wants to draw our attention to the power of prayer in any and every situation. He wants us to think even more instinctively than I do with my penknife.

[2:36] He wants us to think, what do I need in this moment? Invariably, of all the things that we might need, it is to pray. And so what James does initially is he tells us that we do need to pray in all situations.

[2:52] And we see that in the first couple of verses. In verse 13 we see that. He says to pray when you are in trouble. In verse 13, is anyone among you in trouble?

[3:03] Let them pray. Now the trouble that James has in mind there, it might be sickness or ill health. But it's more than that. It's where anything at all bad is happening in our lives.

[3:18] And you'll know if you've been with us in the letter of James. James' first hearers, they face trouble in a number of ways.

[3:28] So just to mention a couple, they were being brought to court by rich people. They were facing trouble in that way. They were scattered out of Jerusalem as a result of persecution.

[3:40] They were scattered to many different places, living in new cultures, new contexts, trying to figure out how to do life in a new place.

[3:51] And so they faced trouble. And we faced trouble. And James casts his net wide when he uses this word trouble. If there is anything bad going on in our lives, let us pray.

[4:03] And you know, sometimes it can be our reflex to pray when we're in trouble. Sometimes it is instinctive. But sometimes we just don't think of praying.

[4:15] Even as followers of Jesus, sometimes we either go into fight mode when we're faced with trouble. I can handle this. Or we go into flight mode when we're faced with trouble, which is, I can't handle this.

[4:29] And so we run and throw ourselves into something else. Or we go into freeze mode, which is when we're just so overwhelmed that the trouble that we're facing is so all-consuming that we find it hard to pray.

[4:43] And if that is our response in any situation, it can be the case that we just don't think of praying. And so at one level, James is telling us something so obvious, so simple, so basic to being a follower of Jesus.

[4:58] But the reason he's telling us is not because we don't know it. It's because of the challenge of actually doing what the word says. And so that's one extreme James highlights when we're in trouble.

[5:11] And the other extreme in verse 13 is when we're happy. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. And a song of praise is essentially a way of praying thanks to God for who he is and for what he has done.

[5:27] Now, maybe you have a kind of a disposition where if you feel happy, your response is to feel guilty. Or to feel bad.

[5:38] If life is going well for a few days in a row, you start to think, Is God trying to trick me or trap me? Why is life going well? But James says actually the response that we should have when we're happy is to praise God for his kindness, for his goodness, that things are going well at the moment, that we feel good, that we feel well.

[6:02] I remember years ago an older Christian friend of mine asked me, Do I sing praise to God? And I said, Of course I do. On a Sunday morning when I gather together with God's people, we sing.

[6:14] And then he said to me, No, I mean, do you sing when you're on your own? Do you sing praise to God? When you have read a little portion of the Bible, when you have prayed, Do you then sing on your own praise to God?

[6:30] And it was a bit of a revelation for me that you don't have to wait until Sunday morning to sing praise to God. And it can feel awkward and it can feel odd and somebody might even overhear you.

[6:42] And yet it is a good thing to sing praise to God when we feel happy. An old preacher many years ago said this about his preaching.

[6:55] He said, I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as I possibly can, provided that they are affected with nothing but the truth and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with.

[7:17] What he's saying is, as we listen to God's word, our affections should be raised because of the truth that we are hearing, our love for him, our passion for him.

[7:29] And preaching, hearing God's word preached is one way in which our affections are raised, according to the truth that we're hearing. But another way that God has given us is by singing his praises.

[7:42] And you know this, the power of music. And when this music is set to words that are true and biblical, what it does is it raises our affections to where they should be as we sing praise to God.

[7:58] And so James gives us advice for when we are suffering on one end of the spectrum, when we are happy on the other end of the spectrum, and by implication, everything in between.

[8:12] He says we are to pray. We are to keep that line of communication open with God. And I wonder which you find easier.

[8:23] Do you find it easier to pray when you're in trouble? Or do you find it easier to sing praise to God when you're happy? James wants us to be able to pray in whatever situation we find ourselves.

[8:38] And so sometimes I can find it harder to pray when I'm in trouble. And so what we need to be able to do is whatever it takes, whether that means going for a walk and praying, whether that means writing out our prayers to get the juices flowing, whether that means meeting with a friend to pray, James says whatever it is, whether you're in trouble or happy, pray and sing praise.

[9:07] And so that's James' kind of overarching big idea, that we are to pray in all situations. And then he starts to give us some particular examples of when we would pray.

[9:21] And so we're just going to take the first one this morning. We had read all the way down to verse 20, and we will pick up with that another time. But I thought it was worth spending time on this first example of when we are to pray.

[9:35] And so this first example is to pray when we are ill. In verse 14, is anyone among you ill? Is anyone among you sick or unwell? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord.

[9:53] And so James here is saying to us that if we feel sick, we are to pray. Or to put it more precisely, if we are sick, we are to call the elders to pray.

[10:05] Now, we gladly pray for the church family here. Myself and John and Philip, it is our honour, our privilege, our joy to pray for you.

[10:16] And we will gladly pray with you, if you would like us to pray with you at any point at all. What James has in mind here, though, is somebody who is very unwell, who is very sick, who is very ill.

[10:31] And that's hinted at by some of the phrases he uses and the picture that he paints. So you'll notice that it's the elders coming to this person.

[10:43] So the kind of suggestion is that they are not well enough to go to meet the elders, but the elders come to them. So they're housebound, perhaps.

[10:54] You'll notice that the elders pray over this person in verse 14, to pray over them. And there's again just a suggestion that this person must be bed bound, that the elders are praying over them.

[11:07] It's also the case that the elders are the one doing the praying. And so this person may be well enough just to call the elders and conscious enough to do that.

[11:19] But it's just so worn out and exhausted that they cannot pray and they need the elders to pray over them and for them.

[11:30] And so this is what we are called to do when we are very, very unwell, to call for the elders to pray over us. And you realize as you reflect on this that the power here isn't in the person.

[11:45] So there's nothing special about me or John or Philip that somehow our prayers are going to be more effective than somebody else's prayers. Occasionally you'll have advertised healing and prayer services.

[12:02] And somebody who has made a name for themselves as a healer will come to town and everyone will, not everyone, some people will flock to see them and be healed.

[12:14] But isn't it interesting that when that happens that isn't the elders of the local church. That isn't somebody who has spiritual care over the congregation, who is to look out for the congregation that has been given this responsibility by God.

[12:33] And so sometimes we'll see a service like that advertised and it's tempting to go. It's tempting to think, I'd love to see more. But the power isn't in the person.

[12:46] The power isn't in the person. James here says that we are to call the elders, those who are in leadership in the local church, who have been recognized by the church as those who have spiritual care for you under the Lord.

[13:06] And we will care for the congregation before, during and after illness. And so we would love to do that. If you are seriously unwell on any occasion, please get in touch with me or John or Philip.

[13:23] But the power isn't in us. And the power isn't in the oil either. James says, let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil.

[13:35] The oil isn't magic. The oil isn't magic. Jesus, when he heals people in the Gospels, sometimes he uses mud. The mud isn't magic. Nor is the oil magic.

[13:47] Sometimes Jesus didn't use mud. Sometimes he was far away from the person. Sometimes he was near the person. Sometimes he touched the person. Sometimes he didn't. Some people see this oil as a medicinal thing.

[14:03] Kind of a soothing thing. So you think of the parable of the Good Samaritan and what the Good Samaritan did for that person who had been beaten up was he poured oil on as a medicinal healing thing.

[14:18] And if that's the case here, then it highlights what we see elsewhere in God's Word. That when we are praying for each other, it isn't instead of medicine.

[14:32] It isn't instead of medicine. It is recognizing that whether God heals somebody directly or indirectly through medicine or through some other way, that God is the primary healer.

[14:46] That God is the one who answers our prayers. Some people think maybe that this oil is kind of communicating in a tangible way. The comfort and soothing.

[14:57] It's kind of a visible expression of God's care and kindness. And you know that there is this softness to it. And so it's a way of communicating to the person who is so unwell that God cares for them and is kind to them.

[15:15] Others think maybe it's a symbolic use of oil. And so in the Old Testament, you had kings who were anointed with oil. And what that symbolized was they are being set apart to God for their role as a king.

[15:31] Now, James isn't here saying that we're setting this person apart to be a king. But maybe what he's getting at is this idea that we're setting them apart, entrusting this sick person to the Lord, asking God to care for them.

[15:47] And this oil being symbolic of that. But the power isn't in the oil. The power isn't in the elders. The power isn't in the oil. The power is in the prayer.

[15:58] James says, let them pray over them. And the reason the power is in the prayer is because the prayer is in the name of the Lord.

[16:10] Verse 14, at the end of the verse, it is in the name of the Lord. And when James says that, he doesn't mean that we simply only put in the name of the Lord at the end of our prayers.

[16:23] Now, that's good. But it's more than that. It is praying in the name of the Lord. That means that we are praying according to God's good character.

[16:35] According to God's perfect will. It's kind of like when you are going in for an interview and the company asks you for a reference. Can you give us some names?

[16:47] And so you put this name and that name and this name on your application form. And if the company know the people that you've named and know their character, then that is a part of the process and being accepted in the interview.

[17:04] James says that the elders are to pray in the name of the Lord according to his good character and will. So that the elders are to prayerfully and carefully discern as best they can how they should pray over this person.

[17:21] It's not to be taken lightly. It is in the name of the Lord. And so James says if anyone is suffering, call on the elders.

[17:32] And the outcome of this, the outcome of this is found in verse 15. The prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well.

[17:43] The Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Now you realize that the purpose then of calling the elders to pray is not to prepare them for death.

[17:59] It's not to prepare them for dying. It is with a view to them being made well. For them to be made well and being raised up off their sickbed.

[18:10] Restoring them to health, restoring them to life. That's the desire. That's what we want. That's something we eagerly want.

[18:21] And if you're suffering this morning from ill health, don't you long for that. James hears that and he knows that. And yet James says it in such an absolute way.

[18:36] He says it in such an absolute way. And if you're familiar with James, you're familiar with the fact that he is found to often state things in an absolute way.

[18:50] It seems like there's no nuance. There's no shading to what he's saying. And if you're familiar with James, you'll know that so often he reflects the teaching of his half-brother Jesus.

[19:07] And you think, oh yeah, Jesus said something like this, didn't he? Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened. And that seems very absolute as well.

[19:19] But then you realize that James and Jesus are both echoing Old Testament wisdom. And when you turn to the Old Testament wisdom literature like Proverbs, what you find is these statements that are made in an absolute way that leave you thinking and chewing this over and trying to figure it out.

[19:40] You hear something like this in Proverbs. Start children off on the way they should go and even when they are old, they will not turn from it. And you think, that sounds like such an absolute promise.

[19:53] And you can see how that would be the case, all other things being equal, if the only influence on a child's life was their parents who were godly and wanting them to walk in Jesus' ways.

[20:08] But all other things aren't equal in a fallen world. And so then when you read other Proverbs, you realize that the child's heart is a factor in this.

[20:20] You realize that their friendships are a factor in the way that they go. You realize the temptations they face are a factor. And so as you read these absolute seeming statements in Proverbs and you piece them all together, what you start to get is a much fuller picture.

[20:37] And that's very similar to what we find in the book. It's a factor of the subject that the proverb is speaking about. As one author puts it, statements are made that are vivid, thought-provoking, that convey a world of truth in a few words.

[20:51] They are neither absolute commands nor promises, or absolute promises, and are partial. They need to be put beside other Proverbs on the same subject to get the full picture.

[21:04] And that's very similar to what we find in James. You hear him making this absolute statement, the prayer of faith will make the person well. And you're thinking, oh, I wish that was so James, but what about this situation?

[21:18] What about this person? And then you reflect a little bit on it and you realize this isn't the first time James has mentioned prayer. And you start to think, okay, I'm going to have to reflect on what James has already said about prayer.

[21:34] James has said in chapter one, if we lack wisdom, ask, and we will receive it generously from God. And that gives us confidence.

[21:45] It puts wind in our sails to ask wisdom of God, as elders to ask healing of God. And then you read in chapter four, we do not have because we do not ask.

[21:58] And you're thinking, okay, I'm going to ask. And you have even more confidence to pray boldly, like James speaks about in chapter five. But then James says, you ask and you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives.

[22:15] And now he's starting to nuance things a little bit. Now he's asking us and asking the elders in this passage to reflect, what's our motive in praying for this healing?

[22:29] And you can imagine how the temptation would be for somebody if they prayed for somebody to be healed and they are healed. The temptation would be to stand up here and say, I prayed and they were healed. And to bring glory to me or to somebody else.

[22:42] And so James, when he speaks about prayer in chapter four, he makes us reflect on our motives, why we're asking us.

[22:53] And then James says, later on in chapter four, to people who have this misguided confidence in the plans that they make.

[23:04] People who say, I will go to this city for a year and I will make a profit. He says, don't think like that. Don't speak like that, with that misplaced confidence in what you will do.

[23:17] You should say, if the Lord wills, you go to this city and stay there for a year and make a profit. And bringing all that to bear on what James says here in chapter five, you realize what it does is it gives us great confidence to pray big prayers and ask God to do big things.

[23:42] To pray for somebody to be healed. But what it also does is it gives us great humility to say, I actually don't know whether this is the best thing that could happen in this situation.

[24:00] Many of you have shared with me how during times in hospital, you've had opportunities to speak about Jesus to people who would never otherwise have heard about it. And if you had been made well, that would have been lacking.

[24:12] What James does is he teaches us on prayer is he gives us great humility and great confidence. And the two things at the same time are absolutely vital.

[24:25] If we have great humility, but no confidence, we will never pray a prayer like this. We will reduce the power and the size of what God can do.

[24:36] We will be afraid to ever ask. We will think that God won't give good gifts to his children. And yet if we have all confidence and no humility, what happens?

[24:51] We make these bold proclamations, I command you in the name of the Lord, be healed. And then when the person isn't healed and it hasn't been God's will, their faith is rattled and undermined.

[25:07] And it's interesting in this passage, just as a kind of an aside, that when James speaks about the prayer of faith, the focus isn't actually on the faith of the person who is unwell.

[25:19] The focus is on the faith of the elders. And so if we would be tempted to think, or if we've heard that, where somebody has been prayed over for healing and then their faith is criticized, it's so wrong.

[25:35] If anybody's faith should be criticized, it should be the faith of the elders or the person who has prayed for them. But of course, James's focus isn't so much on the faith of the elders.

[25:52] James's focus is on this powerful Lord that we pray to. And you know, you see this in Jesus in the Gospels. Sometimes he will heal somebody in response to the great faith that they have.

[26:08] And other times he will heal somebody to strengthen their faith and give them the faith that they are lacking in him.

[26:19] And so James wants us to entrust the outcome to the good, wise, sovereign Lord of our lives.

[26:32] And as we take all of his teaching on prayer together, it gives us great confidence and yet humility at the same time.

[26:43] And that's a powerful combination. When I was in material science back in the day, they told us about concrete. Concrete is a great building material. If you are building a tall building, it can withstand great pressure and can bear great weight if the pressure is straight down on the concrete.

[27:02] But if there's a bit of wind or if the earth moves a little bit underneath, what happens? The concrete can't handle that. If there's any bit of movement side to side or a bit of a twist in the building, the concrete cracks.

[27:17] So what people will do is they'll put steel into the concrete. Steel is strong and steel is also flexible. So steel and concrete together.

[27:28] Now you have strength and confidence in your building. And what James does for us is he gives us confidence and humility together so that we may have great confidence in the powerful savior that we pray to.

[27:47] This is powerful prayer. It is powerful prayer that James is prescribing for us. So what happens if the elders have been called, they pray for the person, they've discerned as best they can, they've prayed in humility and confidence before the Lord.

[28:04] What happens if the person is healed? Well, in that situation, we praise the Lord. What an amazing kindness of God. Whether it is through indirect means.

[28:17] Whether it is through medicine or surgery. Whether it is through a transplant or whether it is through tablets or whether it is through any means. We recognize that it is all under God's sovereign kindness.

[28:30] Or whether it is indirectly where he has worked miraculously to heal somebody. We praise the Lord. What if it hasn't been the Lord's will?

[28:43] Well, that can be so crushing. That can be devastating. It can be so disappointing to be praying for something. something and to go on praying and yet somebody isn't made well isn't healed it can really rattle us it can bring us to tears it can cause us to despair and to doubt why would a good and kind of God not bring about healing in this person's life and the genius of James is that the language that he uses is very carefully chosen so when he says that the person will be made well that is a legitimate translation of that word but the word that he uses could actually easily be translated as saved it's this Greek word so would say he's saying the person will be saved and when he says that the person will be raised up you're thinking okay yeah maybe raised up off their sickbed but actually what he's nudging us towards is a greater raising up he's nudging us towards thinking about far bigger things than physical healing he's saying to us that the Lord will save this person who has this trust in Jesus the Lord will raise this person up this person's sins will be forgiven

[30:26] James wants us to realize isn't that far greater not that he can't heal or won't heal but if he doesn't heal James wants us to see the bigger picture that this person will be saved that this person will be raised from the dead that this person's sins will be forgiven and what James does here is very similar to what Jesus does you think of the story of Lazarus and Mary and Martha Lazarus is really unwell and in a sense what Mary and Martha do is they do James chapter 5 they think well we're not going to call the elders of the church we'll call Jesus that would be even better and so they call Jesus to come and heal their brother to pray over their brother come on Jesus please and what Jesus does is he delays he deliberately delays he doesn't heal Lazarus and Mary and Martha are devastated they say to him Jesus if you had been here our brother would not have died and then a little bit further down the road he meets the next sister and she says

[31:41] Lord if you had been here our brother would not have died and they are devastated and Jesus weeps with them why has Jesus not healed Lazarus and that is a hard place to be for Mary and Martha and if you find yourself with them this morning that is a hard sad grieving place to be but at the start of that narrative and at the end of that narrative Jesus says it clearly you will see the glory of God Jesus says didn't I say to you that you would see the glory of God Mary and Martha pray understandably to Jesus for their brother to be healed and Jesus says I'm gonna do something far greater I'm gonna raise him from the dead you will see the glory of God and James wants us as much as we long for healing and as much as we might ask the elders of the church to come and pray for us in our sickness and that is good and that is right

[32:55] James wants us to see the bigger picture that what we have in Christ is not just hope for this life but hope for eternity it's 30 years since Toy Story was released and Toy Story is such a simple movie in so many ways but I think part of the reason it is so effective is some of the profound longings of our heart that it deals with bear with me at the end of Toy Story Woody and Buzz the two toys are powering along on a rocket and Woody is thinking wouldn't it be great if we get back to the removal truck that we're supposed to be in and as they power along Buzz is guiding their flight and suddenly Woody realises they've gone past the removal truck they've missed what they've wanted Buzz!

[33:56] We've missed the truck! and Buzz says we're not aiming for the truck and they keep going and they get in line with the car that their beloved Andy their owner is in and they plop down through the sunroof into the box of toys and Andy says Mom!

[34:17] They've been here all along! and he hugs them what James wants us to know as much as healing and wellness is wonderful and a gift from God that's not what we're aiming for what we're aiming for ultimately is the glory of God which will be seen when he raises each of us from the grave our salvation is in Christ our resurrection from the dead our forgiveness of sins we're not aiming for the truck prayer is powerful James says in the name of the Lord he is the one who brings us through trouble he is the one who causes us to praise him when we're happy he is the one who can heal our sicknesses and praise be to God he is the one who will save his people he will raise us up on the last day not just from our sick bed but from the grave and it will be to the glory of God and our saviour

[35:21] Jesus Christ let's pray Father we rejoice in your master plan of salvation in Christ and Lord we reflect on the world we live in with so much sickness and suffering and we see trouble in our own lives and we cry out to you Lord that you would meet us in that trouble but more than this Father we pray that you would assure us of the great salvation that you have wrought for us in Christ that our eyes would be firmly fixed on our saviour that in him we will be saved we will be raised from the grave and that we will be forgiven all our sins that's in his name that we pray amen amen amen Thank you.