Sermon on James 5:13-18, Prayer for Healing

It was 1974. I was so discouraged. Our good friend had entered the hospital with leukemia, discovered she was pregnant, and the elders of our church came and prayed for her. I remember one of them saying he felt incredible faith that God was going to heal her. She died a few days later, on Easter Sunday. But James said the prayer of faith would heal the sick! What does this passage mean, then, when it says the prayer of faith will save the sick?  How can James write so confidently?  Is he mistaken?  Was this for his era only?

Maybe you have had disappointing experiences with prayer for healing or for something else equally important or crucial. Didn’t Jesus say that if we ask anything in faith, believing we have what we asked for, it will be granted? Didn’t Matthew assert that our healing was guaranteed by Jesus’ atonement when he said, “By his stripes we are healed”? And yet if you are like me you have seen so little of this kind of answer to prayer. However, here we are today, with this passage in James focused on Radical Prayer.

Maybe there are clues in the context of this passage that would help us get a handle on it, understand it better.

If, however, we decide that there is no guarantee that such healing prayer will save the sick, how do we ever believe for healing or other big things like that?

This passage hinges around three ‘oughts’ or ‘shoulds,’ you should do this, and one command, which we can translate into four commands, therefore:  PRAY, SING, INVITE, CONFESS.  Then it finishes with what we’ve come to expect from James, an illustration meant to hammer home James’ point.

The first command, then…

 

I. You Should Pray When You Are Suffering

¹³ Is anyone among you suffering? He should pray.

We might say to James, “Well, duh!”  But in fact, we often do anything but pray when we’re suffering. We complain, we moan and groan, and/or we look for solutions. This is natural and normal, but none of them goes far enough.

None of them acknowledges the most important thing about suffering, that it is intended to make us more like Christ. We don’t like to suffer, but as true believers we like and desire to become more like Jesus, no matter what that takes. So we should pray!

A little over a year ago I suffered a severe, non-ending gall bladder attack. It was excruciating. I asked God to heal me, praying over the course of several hours in the early morning. He didn’t. I finally woke my wife and said we needed to go to the hospital. I figured, if God isn’t going to heal me outright, He must want to use physicians to do it.

James doesn’t directly say here that prayer in suffering will inevitably lead to relief from suffering, though he is leading us to the challenge of effective and healing prayer. I’ll admit to some discouragement that night, that God did not heal me and instead I had to go to the hospital for help. Did that process help make me more like Christ?  You know, I think so, actually.  Something someone said last week struck me.  Like the seeds we plant in a garden, much of the growth takes place out of sight.  God knew what He was doing.

You should pray when you are suffering.

 

II. You Should Sing When You are Cheerful

¹³ Is anyone cheerful? He should sing praises.

And here again, we might say to James, “Well, yeah, of course, James!”  But that isn’t what we always do either, is it. We reward ourselves with some goodie. We tell someone else how happy we are. We smile and congratulate ourselves

And again, these might all be fine, but once again we are failing to acknowledge the most important thing about good times, that they are from the hand of God and He is to be praised for them.

Charles Ellicott, the 19^th century English bishop and scholar said, “the whole life is to revolve around the throne of God, whether in the night of grief or day of joy.”

That’s what James is telling us with these two commands, that the whole of life is about God.  For the true believer everything hinges on God, both the good and the bad. He is the great obsession of our lives.  He is the biggest reality in our existence. To not engage Him in everything is to live the atheistic life. We have a relationship with the One who made and determines all things.  How could we not come to Him with all things?

So, you should pray when you are suffering, and you should sing when you are cheerful.

Does this mean you shouldn’t pray when you are cheerful, or sing when you are suffering?

Of course not. James said to consider it all joy when you encountered various trials. Paul taught us, “In everything give thanks.” We may certainly pray when we are cheerful, sharing our joyous hearts with God.  We may certainly sing when suffering.  Paul and Silas sang after being beaten and thrown in that dismal, dark dungeon and chained to the wall in Philippi. James is making generalized statements, not exclusive ones.  And that may help us when it comes to his third command.

 

III. You Should Invite the Elders to Pray for You When You Are Sick

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.

1. Is this a promise of total healing?

I didn’t even think to call the elders of the church when I had my gall bladder attack. I’m sure Adam, and David, and Eric, and Jason would have come and prayed for me. And it wasn’t because I didn’t believe that the prayer of faith could heal me. Maybe I should have called them.  That seems like it would have been a great inconvenience late at night or in the wee hours of the morning. I don’t’ know why I didn’t.  I just did not think of it. And maybe that is why James had to write it here in black and white, or whatever color his papyrus and ink were. This is part of what it means to be a community of faith.  Our lives matter to one another, and we need one another.

But James’ instruction seems to come with a promise.  When we call for the elders of the church and they pray over us and anoint us with oil, the prayer of faith will save the sick person and the Lord will raise him up.  Is that as guaranteed as it seems to sound?  Was James really promising that?

I found it fascinating as I read some of the commentaries that many of them assumed James was making a blanket promise here but that such healing was confined to the first century, to that era of the early church, and that it no longer availed for us today. But I question that view.  If such a definite outcome were always the case, even in the early church, then no one who had the elders pray over them would die.  And we know that all will die.

I think this statement of James is meant to cover the majority of cases, not all cases. But even that, of course, raises concerns.  Do we really see even that today?  If not, is it because we are not doing it right, or not having enough faith?

I’m a part of a ministry called The Forsaken Children.  We raise funds to help deliver the children of Ethiopia from the power of poverty.  But I remember a time years earlier when I was in Addis, and a man came into the compound who could not talk because something was wrong with his throat. I felt compelled to pray for this man’s healing, so I did, but he did not get healed. Did I do it wrong? Did I not have enough faith?

I’ve had other situations where I have prayed for people and they were healed.  This sounds kind of goofy when I say it, but for a while, several years ago, it seemed God heard my prayers of healing for people with headaches.  Why only headaches?

I remember once a woman at the church I was on staff with came for prayer after the service. She had been to the doctor thinking it was a certain illness, but the doctor said it wasn’t and didn’t treat her for that illness. As I prayed for her I asked her if God was indicating anything to her. She said He seemed to be saying it was the illness she though it was. She went to another doctor and he confirmed it was and treated her. She was healed. Why didn’t God heal her Himself?  Why send her to the doctor?

Do you recall the experience of king Hezekiah? Hezekiah got some kind of internal infection that caused him to break out in boils.  The infection bubbles to the surface, you might say.  The medical intervention of the time was to utilize poultices.  A poultice was cloth soaked in ingredients that when applied to the open boil were designed to draw out the poison or infection.  His physicians applied poultices, but he was not getting better.  Through the prophet Isaiah, God told Hezekiah he was going to die and to get his house in order.

Hezekiah did not accept this and begged, cried and pleaded with God to spare his life.  God sent Isaiah to Hezekiah and told him He would give him 15 more years.  Then he told him to go get a poultice, he did, and he was healed (2 Kings 20:1-7).  Why didn’t God just heal him directly and instantly?  I don’t know.  God chose to this time use the poultice, the common intervention, and God made it work.  This tells me that God may not choose at times to make the common interventions work, and at times to make them work.  So praying and trusting in God and seeking medical help is still an important aspect of “faith healing.”

I’m rambling on about healing because I think James is telling us something we should be experiencing but we don’t experience it enough, for some reason, and I’m not sure why. Look, we’ve all had to deal with the disappointment of God not healing what we feel He should have healed. The ultimate disappointment will be our deaths.  No one will escape that.  God has not promised to deliver us from that.  It is the way of all flesh. And there are times when God will not hear our prayers, prayers made in faith, for healing.

Paul is a prime example.  In 2 Corinthians 12 Paul describes having a “thorn in the flesh,” a “messenger of Satan” that he asked God to remove three times. But God told him no. He told Paul that His grace was sufficient for Paul, that in Paul’s weakness His strength would be manifest.

God does not promise to always heal, and James knew that.  But He will often heal in response to believing prayer.

But if God does not promise to always heal, then how do we ask in faith for healing.  May I suggest that our faith is not that God will heal, but that God can heal.  Do we really believe that when we pray?

And let me say something about the use of oil. It is not the key to healing. It is an aid to our faith. We smell and feel the oil and it directs our faith toward God. It is not what heals us.

2. Is sickness always caused by sin?

James makes another interesting comment at this point, sort of an add on.  He says, “If the sick person has committed any sins, they will be forgiven.”

Is sin a cause for sickness?  Well, we just saw with Paul that it was.  Paul’s pride occasioned his thorn in the flesh, his physical ailment. But in Paul’s case, though he undoubtedly had confessed this sin, God did not heal him. Not all sickness is caused by sin, however.  That is why James said, “IF the sick person has committed any sins…”

Do you recall in John’s Gospel, chapter 9, when they came upon a man blind from birth and the disciples asked Jesus who sinned, this man or his parents? Jesus said, “Neither, but this is an opportunity to show the glory of God.”  Not all sickness is caused by sin. But whenever I have participated in the elders being called to pray for someone’s healing, I have always taken opportunity to ask the one being prayed for if they need to confess any sin.  This may be a necessary part of their healing.

And this leads to James’ last command.

 

III. You Should Confess Your Sins to One Another

¹⁶ Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.

It is notable that James does not say you are to confess your sins to the elders, and it certainly does not say confess to the priest.  Rather, we are to confess to one another.

Why?  That we might be healed. And this seems a broader healing than just healing from illness. So what are we supposed to do?  Tell everyone what our sins are every time we get together? Well, you know, that would actually not be so bad. It has worked for Alcoholics Anonymous. It worked for the early Methodist movement. They met weekly in small groups for accountability and confessed their sins to one another, and that movement spread like wildfire around the world.

I would say that it is the bane of the modern church that instead of interacting with one another in honesty and transparency, we most often put on a front that everything is going just great with us, even though we might really be dealing with stuff.

On the other hand, I’ve not found it helpful or healing to just willy nilly confess our faults to everyone.

It seems more effective and healing to confess to those we are in close relationship with.  This is what worked for the early Methodists. We find healing by bringing the things we keep in the darkness out into the light.  It is hard for sin to live in the light.  It loses its power and we find forgiveness and encouragement to live a more godly life.

But we don’t want to hear our elders and pastors confess their sins do we? We may not want to, but we need to.  No one is sinless, not even pastors.  What benefit is it to us to put them on pedestals?  This has been the struggle of many a pastor, that they cannot be honest about their own sins.  We all need to be able to admit what we’re struggling with that does not please the Lord.  We need that freedom.

So, Pray, Sing, Invite, and Confess.  And to encourage us in our prayers, James gives us the example of Elijah to help us believe that God answers prayers.

The prayer of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect. ¹⁷ Elijah was a human being as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the land. ¹⁸ Then he prayed again, and the sky gave rain and the land produced its fruit.

Why choose Elijah as an example? Well, Elijah made a pretty big and bold prayer request, that the sky that had been shut up for three years would yield rain once again. But the other reason James chose Elijah was that he was a pretty flawed person.

Why does God answer prayer?  Why do we need to pray at all?  Hasn’t God already planned what is going to happen? Well, I don’t know. What I do know is that God has commanded us to pray. And God tells us right here in James that He has chosen to respond to our prayers. How that all works out in the divine plan is a mystery.  It is a mystery we are to count on. The little breaths we utter become a mighty wind that alters the course of history. He has given us the extraordinary privilege of shaping the future when we pray.

Are you suffering…PRAY.  Are you happy…SING.  Are you sick…INVITE the elders to pray for you.  And CONFESS your faults to one another, even if you are an elder or pastor.  If you want to do any of those actions today, come to us in the prayer ministry after service, even if you want to sing to us.  But especially if you want to find helpful prayer for suffering, healing for illness, or confession for forgiveness.

Oh, little flock, the Lord loves us.  We love the Lord.  We love each other.  This community of faith is His gift to us.