James series – “The Litmus Test for life”

James 5:15-18

¹⁵ Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven. ¹⁶ Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. ¹⁷ Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years! ¹⁸ Then, when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops.å

The first step is corporate confession and the second step is:

2. Corporate prayer – Vs 16-18

Once again, this is a corporate command, its for the whole body. When we have someone in our midst who is going through affliction, we are called to pray for them. But how do we pray for them? Well, James is a pastor gives us a powerful picture of prayer here. He gives us the illustration of Elijah from 1 Kings 17-18. Our verse in James describes Elijah as being human as we are. Not only did James church need that reminder but so do we. Because while they didn’t have comic book heroes like Superman and Batman back in James’ day. What they did do was to make heroes of the men of the Old Testament. The problem with that is that they tended to look at them the same way we look a Superman. They were mythical, superhuman people. But James refutes that rational. He says that Elijah was just an ordinary man with an extraordinary God and an extraordinary burden, His call from God. He was a prophet in Israel during a time when it seemed as if everybody else in the nation worshipped other gods. Including King Ahab and his wife Jezebel. So, in the face of that kind of affliction, what did Elijah do? He prayed. It’s here that James reveals several powerful principles when it comes to prayer: 

1. Passion of the Petitioner – “The earnest prayer”

Elijah was so passionate for God’s people to turn back to God that he was willing to pray a prayer that would cause him to have to personally suffer. He didn’t pray that everything would go well for Israel in order for them to turn to God. He prayed that it would stop raining, and it did for three and ½ years. But as you go through 1 Kings 17-18, you will discover that the lack of rain also brought hardship for Elijah. He had to get food from ravens and water from the trickle of a stream. When that ran out, he had to depend on the faith of a poor widow woman. Elijah’s effectual fervent prayer didn’t make life easy for him. That’s not what it was designed for. It was designed for the benefit of the whole nation. It was designed to show God’s power and glory to Israel so they would turn back to Him. And, for an ever so brief moment in their history, that’s what happened. You know the story of what happened on Mount Carmel. Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal to see whose God could consume the offering. The false prophets of Baal spent all day crying out to their gods, even cutting themselves so that their blood poured out. But there was no response. Then it was Elijah’s turn. He rebuilt the altar of the Lord and placed the sacrifice on it according to the requirements of the Law. And then he soaked it with water three times. This was not a waste of water in a time of drought but an offering of what was precious and rare. And then he prayed. This is his prayer in 1 Kings 18:36-37: “Elijah the prophet walked up to the altar and prayed, “O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, prove today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant. Prove that I have done all this at your command. ³⁷ O Lord, answer me! Answer me so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God and that you have brought them back to yourself.” A simple, two sentence prayer. And look what happened in verses 38-39: “Immediately the fire of the Lord flashed down from heaven and burned up the young bull, the wood, the stones, and the dust. It even licked up all the water in the trench! ³⁹ And when all the people saw it, they fell face down on the ground and cried out, “The Lord—he is God! Yes, the Lord is God!”God was glorified. What about you, is that the passionate cry of your prayer life, God be Glorified, it was Jesus prayer in John 17. Elijah prayed, not for his personal comfort. He prayed that God would be magnified, no matter what. And guess what? God was magnified. Unlike the prosperity preacher Elijah had a passion for holiness over happiness. He was willing to be homeless so others would know God’s holiness. 

James series – “The Litmus Test for life”

James 5:15-18

¹⁵ Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven. ¹⁶ Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. ¹⁷ Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years! ¹⁸ Then, when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops.

1. Corporate confession – Vs 15-16

The first step to corporately passing the affliction test is corporate confessing. But why does James call us to confess and come clean? What is the objective, what are we trying to accomplish, verse 16 makes that clear, “so that you may be healed.” The objective is to be healed of the affliction that we’re going through. Sick here isn’t just physical sickness but also sin sickness. It is affliction of all kinds, from persecution, to affliction, to actual sickness, to sin-sickness. And it only makes sense that if the sickness is that broad, so is the healing. That’s where confessed and forgiven sins come into play. Scripture clearly teaches in 1 John 1:9 that, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” God is the only One who can forgive sins. And He only forgives sins through the blood of His Son Jesus Christ. Sins are only forgiven by the Father through the blood of the Son. But, verse 15 is saying that God works through the contrite, humble prayers of the afflicted to draw them to Him. It is through these humble, contrite prayers that we realize how helpless we are to deal with things on our own. And it is only through that kind of prayer that God will forgive sin through the blood of Christ. It’s here that we see the transition in the passage from individual responsibility to corporate responsibility. Seeing the contrite, humble condition of one who is petitioning God in the face of affliction should drive the church to contrition as well. When one among us is suffering, we don’t know the reason why. It could be something they brought on themselves. It could be personal sin. But it could be something that had nothing to do with that. Like the blind man that the disciples asked Jesus about in John 9 when they wanted whether his sickness was the result of his sin or the sin of his parents. But what did Jesus say in John 9:3? “Jesus answered, “It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. “This happened so the power of God could be seen in him.” Not all sickness is the result of sin. But when we see one among us suffering affliction, it should drive us to ask the question, “Lord, do we have sin among us that is causing this affliction?” That almost sounds foreign to us, doesn’t it? How could our corporate sin bring affliction upon an individual in the church? Because we’re a body. The cancer of sin doesn’t care which part of the body displays the symptoms. That’s why we’re told to confess our faults one to another. Not as some sort of sordid gossip session. It’s about being accountable to each other. And it’s about holding each other accountable. If you see your brother or sister engaging in sin, you need to confront them. Know that it won’t be easy so do it in love and still expect to face their wrath. Look surgery and disease treatment isn’t easy either, but it’s necessary. When we confess sin there is corporate accountability. If you want to get serious with secret sin in your life then share it, get it out in the open. Today our culture calls us to come out of the closet, not to confess sin but to celebrate sin. Where in your life do you need to come out of the closet, confess and get clean? Why have we created a culture in the church of serious sin and soft sin? All sin brings forth death. When we get selective with sin we just teach our kids that you need to sin right and you will be alright. So let me ask you a question why are we harder on the sin of homosexuality than the sin of heterosexual lust. Are we saying that its somehow ok to lust as long as its after the opposite sex? Look homosexuality is not what is destroying marriage its heterosexual divorce. Confession cleans out the closet. So, if confession brings sin out into the open where it can be confronted and conquered then why don’t we confess our sins to one another? Shame, why did Adam and Eve try to hide from God in the garden, shame. Many of us are living under the shadow of shame instead of under the power of Christs name.  I think this verse drags each of us out of our comfort zone. Because in order to confess you have to admit you were wrong. And most of us don’t like to do that. So, let me ask you, do you find it easy to admit when YOU have done something wrong? If we are honest, none of us are really comfortable admitting we have done something wrong. Some people are too proud, some are indifferent, and some think it shows weakness. While we may be comfortable talking to God in prayer, asking Him to forgive our sins as we forgive those who sin against us, but confessing to each other, that’s a little too risky. What will people think if I told them THAT about ME. One of the biggest barriers to corporate confession is image. We try and maintain an image with each other, we want others to see the Church me, the Christian me, not the real me. So, we put our energy into framing us the façade instead of working on what is inside. We end up with these beautiful store fronts on the outside with empty shelves on the inside. Outwardly we want to appear ok, yet inwardly there can be a whole load of issues we refuse to deal with. We don’t want others to know what we are feeling, we don’t want to appear weak, we don’t want to appear faithless, we don’t want to take the risk of being judged. So, we fake it. We never mature and become the Christians Christ has called us to be because we put our energy into faking instead of faith. You will either be defined by the Savior or destroyed by the sin. But confession reminds us that we are defined and refined by the Savior not by our sin.