I LL SHOW YOU (PART 13 - PRAYING FAITH) VISIBLE FAITH IN THE BOOK OF JAMES

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1 I LL SHOW YOU (PART 13 - PRAYING FAITH) VISIBLE FAITH IN THE BOOK OF JAMES Small group Focus: The Prayer of Faith & The Prayer of a Righteous Person Overview (Outward Evidence) James 5:13-18 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. 13

2 In other words, who do you turn to when you re in trouble? And who do you thank when you are blessed? If you re suffering, James says you should pray. Paul takes it even further. Romans 5:3 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, James says if you re cheerful you should rejoice. Paul says, Rejoice in your sufferings. What on earth? And that s why we don t really get it. Our thoughts and experiences are strapped to this earth alone. Even now the presence of God is unreal to many of us. We don t sense His presence now. The reality of God is speculation to many of you. Do you really believe He loves you? That He gave Himself for you? Not in some general way, that you just happen to be included in this thing called humanity, but do you believe that He lived and died for you specifically? Paul knew Christ in a way that made him say there is nothing on this earth that compares to Jesus. He said that he considers everything a loss compared to knowing Christ. Isaiah the prophet of the Old Testament wrote of the future and coming Messiah: Isaiah 9:6 (KJV) 6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. His name shall be called Wonderful. The author of Hebrews writes: Hebrews 1:3 3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. This is the Jesus that James is talking about praying to. This is the Jesus that Paul is talking about praying to. Then Paul wrote to the ancient church in Rome: Romans 9:5 5 To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. You can t get clearer than that -- Jesus is God over all. A man who is God in the flesh. How

3 does that work? I don t know, but I also don t know how my spirit and my body are united, but indeed you know you are more than merely flesh and bones. R.A. Torrey, who was instrumental in establishing Biola University, wrote, The wonderfulness of His being and nature will be the object of our glad and adoring contemplation and the theme of our highest praises throughout the endless eons that are to come, throughout eternity. That s the Jesus Paul teaches us about -- Jesus the Wonderful. Paul and James believed the words of Christ, All power is given to Me. They believed those words were absolutely true. They believed Jesus heard them whenever they prayed. They prayed with the assurance that God could work His will on earth as easily as He works it in heaven. They believed that Jesus loved them and gave His life for them. It wasn t a hypothetical head-knowledge. It was a true experiential knowledge of Christ. There are basically two elements to the Christian life -- inward reality and outward evidence. The Apostle Paul spoke more of the inward reality. James speaks more of the outward evidence, but it s based upon the inward reality. Have you ever had to convince someone that enduring something was worth it? Now, endurance in our culture basically means you have to stand in line a long time. But, oh, the food is so worth it or the show is worth it. Paul is saying that whatever you have to endure in this life, it will all be worth it because Christ is worth everything. He is worth trading everything for. You can lose everything, but if you have Christ you gain everything. You can be hated by literally everyone on the planet, but if you have the favor of God you have something that is more valuable than the favor of the entire world. Having the favor of God is having all favor. And what we need to keep in mind is that even when it feels like life is against you, you have the favor of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ. He loved you and gave Himself for you. James 5:14 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.

4 Why do we anoint with oil? It was a practice of the Apostles to anoint people with oil while praying for them. Mark 6:13 13 And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them. However, the Apostles didn t invent this practice. The first mention of anointing with oil comes in Genesis when Jacob set up a pillar where he spoke with God and poured oil on it. Oil was used to burn for light, so without oil your lamp goes out. (Matt. 25:3-8) God also instructed the children of Israel to take anointing oil and pour it over the head. (Ex. 29:7) The anointing of oil represented that the Lord had chosen you. (1 Sam. 10:1) The Lord anointed you to be prince over His heritage. Samuel filled a horn with oil to anoint the king (2 Kings 9:6). So, anointing with oil was a sign of blessing. Psalm 23:5 5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. In the New Testament oil is associated with healing ointment, like a cream or a balm, like in the account of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:34). It was not something magical. People were healed all over the gospels without the aid of oil. The problem is when we treat oil like it s something other than it is -- a symbol of God s blessing. Oil is the reminder that you have the blessing of God as His child, that He loved you and gave Himself for you. James 5:15 15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, Now, that s the question. What is the prayer of faith? Many Christians interpret this to mean the greatness of your faith as if faith by itself is the thing that heals. They put the onus on faith, rather than in the One prayed to. Faith in this view has a magical quality that moves God. I think that s a very damaging view of faith. How discouraging to think that you could have a wonderful Christian life or that your circumstances could be different or that you could be healed... if only you had a more faith. God would like to bless you, but unfortunately, your faith is not great enough for Him to bless you.

5 Do you see where this is not only misguided, but horrendously disheartening? The emphasis is not on the wonderfulness of God, but on your faith. That s not biblical. small group examples Biblical faith is always connected to our view of God. Why are you afraid, O you of little faith? (Matt. 8:26) I have not found such great faith in Israel. (Matt. 8:10) Jesus saw their faith. If you look at all the passages on faith, they have to do with Who we put faith in, not in the faith itself. When you know how wonderful Jesus is, you have greater faith in Him to take you through whatever He wants to take you through. When you have a little view of God, you will have little faith in God. Faith is always connected to our view of God. Faith is not a power in and of itself. This is what let it be done to you according to your faith means. Where does faith come from? Itself? No, the Bible says faith comes from hearing and hearing the Word of Christ. Matthew 17: And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to him and, kneeling before him, 15 said, Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly. For often he falls into the fire, and often into the water. 16 And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him. 17 And Jesus answered, O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me. 18 And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly. 19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, Why could we not cast it out? 20 He said to them, Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, Move from here to there, and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you. So Jesus tells them it was because of their little faith, but in the same breath He tells them that a little faith is all they need in a God for whom nothing is impossible. Andrew Murray, that great Christian author on prayer, wrote, The simplest, feeblest Christian can pray down blessing from an Almighty God. Your faith is only as great as your view of God, because it is not your faith that is great. It is God who is great. Mark 11:22 22 And Jesus answered them, Have faith in God. Faith has a direction and the direction of faith is God, as self-revealed in this Book. Your faith is directed toward your specific idea of God. And if your idea of God is not the self-

6 revealed God of the universe, then you are praying to a god of your own imagination. Your faith only has as much legitimacy as the god you place your faith in. But praying to this God you pray to the God for whom nothing is impossible. James 5:15 and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. In the gospel accounts, Jesus healed people all the time without any reference to their righteousness. He didn t heal anybody because they were worthy of healing. It s interesting here how James then reverses the order of what he just said. He just said, If you re sick, get prayed for, you ll be healed and any sins will be forgiven. Now, he says, Confess your sins, get prayed for, and you ll be healed. James 5:16 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. This is the only place in Scripture where we are told to confess our sins to another person. You have to come out in the open to be healed. You have to come out in the open to be forgiven. It requires vulnerability and humility. The more you are truly known and accepted, the more secure you become. This body life principle is just a reflection of our relationship with Christ. He fully knows us and He fully accepts us in spite of fully knowing us. James 5:16-18 The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. 17 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. 18 Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit. The prayer of a righteous person. First, let s be clear on what James is not talking about. He is not referring to selfrighteousness, which is trusting in your ability to be personally good. That s not what he means by righteous person. What James is talking about here is our personal obedience to Jesus. It s the same idea of faith without works is dead. Prayer without personal obedience to Jesus is dead. This is the clear teaching of the New Testament.

7 John 15:7 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 1 John 3: Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; 22 and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. The same way that our faith is connected to our view of God, our power in prayer is connected to our personal obedience to Jesus. Now, let me give you a few hard words that I believe are true. We have tone-downed the teaching on prayer to accommodate an anemic church. Anemic means sickly, lacking spirit and vitality. Our disobedience makes us powerless in prayer. It leaves us with neither the desire nor the faith to pray. It leaves us too blind to see our desperate need for prayer. Somehow, with all our technology and everything that s been invented to make our lives more convenient, somehow we have less time for prayer meetings than our forebears who churned their own butter, made their own soap and washed everything by hand. Is that the case? Or is it just the reality that you make time for what s truly important to you? Jesus said that by trying to save your life, you lose it. But by losing your life, you find it. He understands who He is. He understands that He s all you need. And He is always patiently teaching us Who He is and that we can trust His Word and His will more than our own. Let me leave you with one more Andrew Murray quote: The life that gives up all for God can claim all from God. The man who is ready to risk all for God can count upon God to do all for him. In the old days, preachers would often say that you could judge a church by its prayer meeting. When the prayer meetings were well-attended, it was a sign of spiritual vitality. We have allowed this standard to lapse. It is said that we lead different lives now. We live in a different culture now.