Right, our New Testament reading this morning will be our sermon text, James chapter five. James chapter five, verses 13 to 20. I’d like to follow along, please turn there at this time. Please give your full attention, this is the word of God. Apostle James says, 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 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 wanderings will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. The word of the Lord. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord indeed endures forever. You may be seated. Jeremy, in prayers, we ask his blessing upon the preaching of his word and the hearing of that word. Let’s pray. Oh, Lord God, we are privileged again to come, and we come to you now, and we’re eager to hear you and your word. We come to sit at your feet and be still and listen. We pray, Lord, help us to settle our souls and focus our hearts. Help us to receive from you that which is most important, your word, because there you give us yourself, your grace, your blessing, your kingdom. It is for all these that we yearn and long, and so we pray, dear Lord, open our eyes and our hearts that we might accept by faith all that we hear, that it may change our hearts and our lives, and they will be transformed evermore into the image of our Savior, Jesus Christ. It’s in His name that we pray, and all God’s people said, amen. Amen. We talk a lot about prayer here at Providence. Of course, this is natural to a church to do. And as we come to James, his closing discussion in this closing chapter, he’s discussing prayer. If you notice, it’s bookended with prayer, and the section is about prayer and things related. And we’re at the end of this letter, and maybe you’re, like me, a little sad about that, right? James has done a wonderful job painting for us a portrait of the messiness of the life of faith in a fallen world. Struggles of trial and temptation and anger and conflict. Struggles with faith and work. Struggles of wisdom. And I’m deeply convinced that with all the helpfulness of that and all that that is, perhaps the thing that James ends with here is most important. The most important perspective that you could ever carry as you struggle to live the life of faith in this fallen world. Remember what James has done here as we have worked through this book. He has called us to consider an entirely new paradigm for living. No longer is my life shaped by the small kingdom, my small kingdom and agenda of my wants and my needs and my feelings. God invites me to be part of a big macro agenda of God’s kingdom, the kingdom of God. And James is very honest about the struggle of life. about what the walk of faith looks like at the ground level, where all of us live our lives. It’s not a storybook, it’s not a fable. It’s real, it’s true. This is truth. This is God’s word. And we hardly ever welcome with trial, joy, right? In case you haven’t noticed that. It’s not usually our response when trials come is to be joyful. We point the finger for problems that are going on outside of ourselves. failing to believe that our sin is what caused something that goes on inside of us. And in moments of conflict, we’re convinced that it’s not really us, right? We think that we’re wiser than we are, than we’ll ever be. And we act like we’re more in control than we’ll ever be. And so there’s a way in which this picture, this picture that James is painting, this portrait he gives is of all of us. It’s a portrait of all of our struggles. And yet James ends with something that is radical and important, of the utmost significant. And in talking about prayer, James calls us to remember something that is very, very important that we remember and not forget. And that is that in all the struggles that we go through, and all the messiness of seeking to live a life of faith in a broken world, It’s vital to remember day after day after day again and again and again that God is with you and that God is for you. Well, that’s what prayer does, right? The prayer of faith reminds us of these things. It corrects our perspective of this reality. And so let us get into this letter, this passage, this closing passage, and see what the Lord has for us here. As we’ve seen in the past several weeks, The Lord God, through James, recall, has been warning us against a particular thing, kind of a big category. And that was what, you recall, apathy towards the internal, or as we have termed it, as others have termed it, and I’ve tried to explain it for us, that eschatological indifference, right? An indifference towards inward and upward things, things of final things, ultimate consummatory things, and apathy and indifference towards those. living without an eternal perspective. We have to state at the outset that this is a misused passage in many ways. It’s misused in many ways, this particular passage. It’s appealed to by some to support an aberrant teaching you may have countered in your life or gone through in your life about healing, an aberrant teaching about healing. And people who hold to this view point to this text and say, Hey, it says right there that the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, right, or save the one who’s sick. This passage is on, we’ll deal with that. This passage is also misused by the Roman Catholics as the basis for their sacrament of last rites. And perhaps you know this if you maybe come out of that heritage. But what are we to make of this passage, right? When we look at this passage, what are we to make of it? What is it saying? Well, to begin with, We must understand the specific setting in view here is not just any old illness, not just any old sickness, but it’s a very serious illness in which death is feared to be close at hand. And the evidence for this, right, how do we know this? Well, we look at the passage and we see that the person is so sick that he cannot go to the elders to have them pray for him. He must call the elders to come and visit him at his bedside. Furthermore, James uses a different word for sick in verse 14 than he does in verse 15 that says, the one who is sick, the one who is sick. But it’s a much stronger word than merely sick. The second word there means to be hopelessly sick, to waste away. And it’s in some context in scripture, it even means to die. It’s analogous to die, synonym for dying. And so in other words, it’s saying in verse 14, we could term it like this, is anyone among you on his deathbed? If anyone is ill to the point of facing the very real prospect of death, then he or she is to call the elders of the church, and then we’ll pray for the person and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. We’ll talk about anointing oil in a moment. But for now, the picture that we see here is pretty straightforward. The elders have prayed for the seriously ill person. And they’ve also anointed him or her with oil in the name of the Lord. And then verse 15 and 16 tell us what, this is where many people get very hung up and it’s very trouble understanding or forcing it to mean certain things that it’s not saying. And it says, the prayer offered in faith, what’s the reference to that? It’s back in 14, right? The prayer offered in faith. It’s the fact that the elders had come and had prayed for this seriously ill person. But what does James mean when he says, without qualification, that this prayer will save the one who is sick? Some of your translations may say, restore the one who is sick. And that’s where some of this aberrant theology comes from. But what does it mean that this prayer will save the one who is sick? Save from what? What is he talking about? Save from illness? From sickness in general? Physical healing? Is that what he’s saying? As some assert? James seems to use the word to save here exclusively with reference, not just here, but he uses the word when he uses it in his context as James speaks. It’s a reference to spiritual salvation. It’s a reference to spiritual salvation. We have an example right here in the middle of this passage in the immediate context that clearly has this meaning. So it’s a bit odd that James would switch the meaning and use it to refer to physical healing. So what verse 15 is saying is this, it says, the prayer of faith will save from eternal death the one who is sick to the point of physical death. You see that? So we must understand the words in context and what they’re saying, what they’re meaning. And this, of course, matches up with the next part of verse 15 that says what? And the Lord will raise him up. And the Lord will raise him up. The Lord’s raising up the sick person is by some interpreted as raising them up from their sickbed, right, or granting restoration to full health. This is how some interpret this passage. But is that the required or even the best reading of those words? Is that what fits the context best? And I think not. I think not. And in reality, this is referring to what? It’s referring to the resurrection of the body. The resurrection. James uses the same verb that we find here for resurrection that is found throughout the New Testament. And so in verses 14 and 15, we have this. I want to repeat it just to set the context because we can get lost here. It says, the prayer offered in faith will save from eternal death the one who is sick to the point of physical death, and the Lord will raise him up. And you might be wondering, it’s a natural question that might come in hearing this, well, why is that? Why would a sick person, who’s already a believer, need this? And James explains that because, you know, anticipating the questions that we might have, it tells us, the answer is in the last part of verse 15, where he says, and if he has committed any sin, he will be forgiven. That’s how 15 ends. And so, in other words, the person who is gravely ill, to the point that he suspects he’s about to pass out of this life and into the next, is naturally going to be concerned with and thinking about on his mind to make sure that he is right with God. And of course, this is what happens often when people are near death, with the nearness of death. Then James, verse 16 says, therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed. that you may be healed. And this is another one of the verses that can be a red flag verse that is misinterpreted so often. And again, with those who believe in the health and wealth prosperity gospel, or charismanism, or other distortions of healing, they’d end up being pagan, frankly. Some believe that the reason people suffer with various illness is because of unconfessed sin in their lives. You may have heard this before. I see some of your heads nodding. You may know people who’ve been abused in this way, and it’s nothing short of abuse to be told this. By enduring suffering or being told that it is your fault for lack of faith or for holding on to unconfessed sins, right? That’s why you’re ill. That’s why you have problems. That’s why you have physical ailments. And both are cruel and wicked and unbiblical. They’re evil, really. And they say that physical illness is merely the outward manifestation of an inner illness of the soul. And therefore, James would be saying what? He’d be saying that you ought to confess your sins in order to secure release from physical ailments. Now, listen, brothers and sisters, if you hear people saying these things, you run the other way. You run the other way. It is nothing short of abuse. It is cruel. It is wicked. It is wrong. What are the problems with thinking that? What are the problems with that in this view, in the context, from the context? Well, first, what is the concern of the passage as we’ve seen? What’s the context? What’s James talking about? We’ve seen it’s not just any old illness, right? It’s not just a migraine headache. This isn’t just a minor thing. It’s not just any old illness. It’s an illness that is so serious that the person is facing the very real prospects of death. And then second, there’s no biblical warrant for the idea that sickness is always rooted in unconfessed sin. By way of biblical evidence, what do we have? Or you may remember, you may be recalling the incidents in John chapter nine, right, with the man born blind. The disciples asked Christ, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind, right? There’s an assumption, it’s a loaded question, right? And what does Christ say? Jesus says, it was neither. It was neither. But it was that the works of God might be displayed in him, right? And so this leaves an insurmountable problem for that view. And then third, the word healed, right, is best interpreted here as spiritual restoration, spiritual reconciliation. Whether or not it’s accompanied by physical healing, that’s up to the providence of God. God can do as he pleases. But that’s not the main point. That’s not the head concept that James is giving here. And that’s not, by the way, demanded or required of the text, that it be physical healing. It’s quite presumptuous, actually, to think that we can know that, that he would say that. But an example where the word healing is used metaphorically to mean something, to mean healing from guilt or power of sin, an example of that is in 1 Peter, right? 1 Peter 2, verse 23, where Peter’s speaking of Christ, and he says this, he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross. so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. For by his wounds, you are healed.” See that? By his wounds, you are healed. And what is this an allusion to, of course? It’s Isaiah, right? Isaiah 53. We know this passage very well. Isaiah 53, 5, he was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell upon him, and by his scourging, we are healed, right? We are healed. We see something similar to this as well in Hebrews 12, verses 11 to 13. Maybe look at that later. We don’t have time this morning for me to unfold that for you now. But the Holy Spirit’s healing work is what? It’s to apply Christ’s death to the wounds caused by sin. Christ has taken upon himself our infirmities, our sins, and borne them in his own body on the tree. It’s an objective reality. It’s an objective reality. It’s objectively true. It’s not true to me and not to you. Truth doesn’t have a for me or for you. Truth is truth. But we also need the subjective assurance of this in the Christian life. Our sins may be forgiven, but our consciences may not be fully healed. And the spirit takes the work of Christ and he applies it as a salve of our conscience to assure us that we are indeed forgiven and accepted by the Father. So then, if the healing mentioned at the end of verse 16 is the healing of forgiveness, then we see that the purpose of calling the elders and confessing your sins to them is for spiritual healing. And the phrase there in verse 16 where it says, to one another, confess to one another, you see that? It does not refer to some kind of mutual confession among all the members of the congregation. It refers back to verse 14, right? To calling the elders and having them pray for you, so you may be saved, raised up at the last day and forgiven. You have the assurance of this. This, of course, matches the context of what just came before this. In verse 16, it says, the effective prayer of a righteous man has great power, has great power. And then in verse 17, James does what? He mentions Elijah, right? A particularly righteous man whose prayer indeed accomplished much. You remember the great prophet Elijah and all that he did and all that he went through in the work that God did through this prophet. Elijah’s prayers, as is referenced here in James 5, accomplish what? Accomplish the dual sanctions of the old covenant, right? That’s the prophet’s job description, right? To bring the lawsuit, to bring the lawsuit, bring the sanctions. And when he prayed, you remember what happened? The covenant curse of drought came upon Israel. And then he prayed a second time, recall, three and a half years later, and the covenant curse was lifted, and the blessing of rains came and refreshed the people of God, and it brought forth fruit as that blessing. But, you know, there’s a wonderful thing, there’s a wonderful add-on there in verse 17, right? We think, I’m not Elijah, I’ve got no power within me, I’m weak, I’m feeble, I’m slow to believe, my faith is pathetic. But look at what verse 17 says about this righteous man, the great Elijah. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, you see, with a nature like ours. And so in God’s grace, he identifies us with this great man. We think of tears, right? The great people of the faith, great people of God. We’re all the people of God like that, right? He had a nature like ours. And then the last two verses of this section, verses 19 and 20, or the continuation of the topic of the deathbed confession. Look at verse 19. It says, 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. The restoration of the erring brother is occurring by means of the church’s ministry of reconciliation, the Lord working through his people, working through the church. So not only should the extremely sick person who was on his deathbed request this ministry and seek this work of God through the church, but the church should be looking for the straying sheep, and especially those sheep who are near the moment of death. They should seek to bring that wanderer back to God. And in this way, the church will, as an instrument of a sovereign Lord, save his soul from death and cover a multitude of sins. What the text is saying here is that serious sickness is an opportunity, an opportunity to search our hearts and confess our sins. When we are facing the very real prospect of death, Our minds are lifted to the judgment day, when we will stand before the Lord to give account of our thoughts, words, and our deeds, whether good or ill. And as we contemplate that, we can only conclude one thing, and that is that in and of ourselves, we are wretched sinners in his sight. Wretched sinners. Alone in our sickbed, such thoughts can bewilder and confuse us, and perhaps even cause us to tremble in fear. And we need to be reminded that there is rescue from that bewilderment and confusion and trembling fear. There’s rescue from that. We need to remember that we can put aside the silly things that we do to block out and deny that reality, pretend that it doesn’t exist. And that the things that we believe for no good reason, we can put them aside or with no real authority. And for those of you who know the Lord, who’ve tasted of the refreshing, life-giving waters of God’s forgiveness in Christ, who’ve trusted in him as he has offered himself to you in the gospel, you remember and believe and rejoice that though you remain incomplete and imperfect while on this earth, and you carry and struggle with the sin that remains, know and rejoice that in his sight, you are a wretched sinner no longer. You’re a wretched sinner no longer. Now you are seen by the Father clothed in the perfection of his dear Son, an amazing thing. You are cloaked in the garment of Christ’s perfection. And the Father now sees you as holy and pure because in Christ he has made you holy and pure. You may have had a very imperfect earthly father. Perhaps you had an earthly father that you feared or that you flinched at when he raised his hand. You need to know and to trust and believe. You now have a loving heavenly father. You have a father who hears, who listens, who loves you, truly loves you, who heals and restores and gives life to his children. And if you had the other side, a good loving father on this earth, oh, the exponentially more good and loving father you have in heaven. And if you’ve not entrusted yourself upon the Lord, I plead with you, now, do not delay, now is the time. Now is the time. Scripture says, the time is now. And he calls all of you to come to believe, to trust and have life forever with him. So as you go back from the house of the Lord, this Lord’s day, into your week, into your world, remember the one who alone makes life have any meaning at all. Remember the one who gave himself for your life. Remember that there are but two options regarding our worship and devotion. Only two. It’ll either be given to the creator or to the creature. The creature of self, or the creature of work, or the creature of family, or the creature of things. But the thing is, none of those things truly can provide ultimate satisfaction. And the reality is, you cannot have full devotions you were intended to do towards those things appropriately until you’ve tasted the love of the Father. Let us remember as we go that the Creator entered His own creation, lived a perfect life, endured the scourge of the world, and He died on a real cross, a cross that if you ran your hands across it, you could feel the grain of that wood. It’s factual history. He died and He rose again so that those who believe in Him would live forever. They would never endure God’s just judgment because that just judgment is falling upon the one who died for you. And in remembering this, brothers and sisters, let us go forth and live for this one with all of our lives, all for His glory. Amen. Let’s pray.