Well let’s take our bibles together and turn to James 5:13-20.  And let’s start with this. When James writes in verse 13… 

13 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. 

What’s he saying in that verse? What does he want us to do? Here’s what he’s saying. He is saying, “no matter what you are experiencing in life… in the highs and in the lows of life… you process that experience in your relationship with the Lord” “No matter what you are going through in life… take it to the LORD in prayer.”

Things are going good for you right now? Great! Praise God for that. Sing a song of praise to him. Don’t forget about him in the midst of your good times. That actually happens a lot, by the way. I see more people “run” from God in the good times then in the bad times. In the bad times people are more inclined to cry out to God. In good times, people forget about the Lord. 

Are things going bad for you right now? If you are suffering, then you need to pray! This word for suffering is a generic Greek word, κακοπαθέω. κακο means “bad” and παθέω is derived from a word meaning “passion” or “pain” or “suffering.” If you are suffering something bad, if you feel bad, if you are in pain, then you go to pray. If things are going good, pray. If things are going bad, pray. Take everything to the Lord in prayer. Right? 

When I was a teenager, I had this really painful experience. I had this stomachache that was incredibly painful. It was so painful, I had to stay home from school. And I remember writhing in pain at my old house at 9106 Marsh Drive in Austin, Texas. And I started singing this song to the LORD in my agony. “If I ever needed the LORD before, I sure do need him now.” That was the prayer of my heart in my agony. And you know what? The pain didn’t go away as I was singing. Not immediately anyway. But I was steadied in the midst of that pain. God gave me the strength to endure it. And I will never forget that experience. I’ve had multiple experiences like that in my life. 

Let me take you to another experience about fifteen years later. I remember being in Chicago, Illinois on February 15, 2008. It was the day after my son was born. Probably the greatest day of my life. And I had to take a moment and get away from the hospital and just praise God. I was so overcome by gladness and gratitude. I spent probably a solid hour just expressing my joy to the LORD. 

What’s James saying here? What’s he saying in the last few words of this great book of the NT? He is saying, “No matter what you go through in this life, in the good times and in the bad times, process your experiences through your prayer-filled relationship with God.” Be quick to pray. Be quick to pray. Are you like that? Are you quick to pray to God in the good times and the bad times of life?   

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The title of our message today is “Healthy People; Healthy Churches.” And I want to give you three things that healthy people in healthy churches do from James 5:13-20. I want to construct this message around three central activities of a healthy church: 1) Intercession, 2) Confession, and 3) Intervention. We’ve already started talking about that first term: Intercession.   

1) A healthy church is a church of intercession (5:13-15)

James says in verse 13,

13 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.

James takes the two opposite extremes of the human experience. Are you cheerful or are you suffering? Are you happy or are you hurting? Whether you are on one end of the human experience or the other, you should direct your thoughts and your words to God. And that’s not just on the opposite ends of the spectrum. That’s true anywhere and everywhere in between those extremes. Wherever you are, you should direct your thoughts and your words to God.

You know church gatherings aren’t just about listening to sermons. Sermons are important. I’ve given my life to the task of preaching. But when we gather, we also have an opportunity to bring our needs to God. We also praise God. We sing praises to him. We worship him. No matter what you are experiencing throughout the week, you should be able to engage God on Sunday or Wednesday. We don’t just hear from God and his Word when we gather. We also talk to God in our prayers and in our praise. That’s part of a healthy relationship and a healthy church. 

Let’s talk more about prayer. Look at verse 14. Healthy churches are praying churches. A healthy church is a church of intercession. And James says, 

14 Is anyone among you sick? 

Now we have a third category here. We had “suffering” (5:13). We had “cheerful” (5:13). And now we have “sick.” 

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.  

Notice “elders (plural) of the church (singular).” Everyone see that? That’s not an accident. A singular church should have multiple elders. “How many elders should a church have, Pastor Tony?” Well, more than one. That’s why “elders” is plural here. And they can be deployed by the church as intercession agents who ask God for healing. 

Now let’s talk practically about this. Let me try to address this as directly as I can. “Your elders here at this church are ready and willing to pray for you and activate James 5:14 for you. We’re ready. And we will make every reasonable effort, at any time, and at any place, to pray over you and even anoint you with oil if you are sick and in need of prayer.” Okay? There’s a distinct possibility here that these folks who were sick that James is writing about were bedridden. They couldn’t get to “the gathering,” so they needed the elders to come to them. And elders need to be willing to do that. Elders need to make every reasonable effort to pray over people in the church who ask for it.

I say reasonable, because if you get sick in Papua New Guinea, we probably won’t be able to board a plane and come lay hands on you in a foreign country. But we can always pray for you, even if we can’t meet face-to-face, lay hands on you, and anoint you with oil. 

Now let’s talk about anointing with oil. Why do we do that? Why is it important? Well first of all it is a physical symbol of the Lord’s power and the Lord’s provision of healing. It’s a physical symbol! In that way it’s like the bread or the cup that we partake of during communion.  

Can we remember Christ’s sacrifice on the cross without the bread and the cup of communion? Yes, we can. Is the experience of communion made more significant through the symbolism and the act of eating and drinking? Yes, I think it is. And I think the effect is similar when you anoint someone with oil as you pray over them. So we do that as elders.  

Now I need to clarify. Some think that this anointing with oil had a medicinal function in the first century church. I do not think that’s the case at all. If the sick person wants a medicinal remedy for their sickness, call a doctor. Don’t call the elders of the church! The elders of the church are not medical doctors. They are spiritual leaders. And their care and concern for the people of the church is spiritual. 

And by the way this anointing isn’t sacramental either. This is not a command for elders to give people last rights or extreme unction just before they die. That’s a Roman Catholic practice that is derived from this passage of Scripture, and I think it’s erroneous. Because the purpose of this anointing is not to prepare you for the afterlife, but to ask God for healing in the present life. You don’t need extreme unction before you die to assure you your place in eternity. You can have that right now through faith in Christ. That way if some country drops an atomic bomb on San Antonio this afternoon and you and I get vaporized, you don’t have to worry about going to hell, because I didn’t administer last rights to you just before you died. No one in this church should fear that. And if you do, then you don’t understand the doctrine of justification by faith alone. James is talking about physical healing here, not spiritual cleansing before death. There is no oil in this world that can give you spiritual healing on your deathbed. I’m sorry; it doesn’t work that way.  

Notice also…look with me in your Bible at verse 14… Notice also that the sick person calls for the elders. I think that’s important too. The elders aren’t supposed to be wandering around town like a traveling troupe of actors looking for a stage to perform on. The initiative here is taken by the sick person, not the elders. Now we will meet you halfway. We are here on Sundays ready and willing to pray for you. And I realize that sometimes it’s a step of faith to come down after a service and humbly ask your elders for prayer. If you need prayer for sickness at that time, and if you ask the elders to pray for you, we will do it. And we will happily anoint you with oil as well.    

But, let me give you some food for thought before you do that. Look at verse 15.

15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick,

Now that word “save” could be translated “rescue” or “restore”… And I want to be clear that this is not salvific here. This is a reference to healing from illness. The Greek word σῴζω that is used here has the semantic range to include both physical and spiritual healing.

15 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.    

Now let me point out some important caveats in this verse. James packs a lot into this one verse. First of all notice “the LORD will raise him up.” When we pray for healing, it’s not the pray-ers that do the healing. It’s not the prayer of faith that does the healing. It’s the object of our prayer and our faith that does the healing. It’s the LORD that does the healing. We clear on that? 

The elders don’t do the healing. The prayers don’t do the healing. The LORD does the healing. And built into that statement is the understanding that God’s will is supreme in our prayers. We pray, as Christ prayed, not our will be done but yours. That is what it means to pray “in the name of the Lord” (verse 14) and to pray a “prayer of faith” (verse 15). 

Doug Moo says it this way, “A true prayer of faith, then, always includes within it a tacit acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty in all matters; that it is God’s will that must be done. And it is clear that it is by no means always God’s will to heal those who are ill.” 

Let me give you some evidence to that fact from the Bible. The Apostle Paul prayed three times for a thorn in the flesh to be removed from him (2 Cor 12:8). He prayed that prayer three times! And God said, “No. My power is made perfect in weakness.” God reserves the right to take our prayers of faith prayed with great passion and great fervor and say, “I love you, my child, but no.” Jesus prayed to have the cup removed in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matt 26:36-46). Paul prayed to have his thorn in the flesh removed. We have to bring our prayers to God with an understanding that God makes the final decision in these matters, and we do not. 

If someone told you otherwise, then that person was lying to you. We don’t give God commands when we pray in faith; we make requests. And we say like Jesus, “not my will be done, but yours.” We say, like the Apostle James said earlier, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that” (4:15). We say, “Lord-willing.” We make plans with the proviso “Lord-willing.” We also pray prayers of faith with the same stipulation—Lord-willing!  

So let me be direct here. If you come up to the front at the end of the service and ask your elders to pray for you and anoint you with oil, we will be more than happy to do that. And we will pray in faith. And we will pray with conviction and great passion. But we will also pray, “Your will be done, LORD, not ours.” 

Here’s another thing that will happen when you come forward and ask to be anointed with oil. We will also ask you, “Is there any sin you need to confess before God at this time?” Here’s why we will do that. Because James says this… look again at verse 15. 

15 And the prayer of faith will save [or restore] the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.    

Now that word “if” there is an important word. There’s no reason to assume that sin is the cause of another person’s condition. Jesus made that clear with the blind man in John 9. His disciples said, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind” (9:2). Jesus said, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (9:3). As elders we don’t want to be like Eliphaz, Bildad or Zophar were to Job. We don’t want to assume a simple cause and effect with your ailment. “Oh, so you are sick, huh? Alright, well what sin did you commit? Come on now. Cop to it!” We’re not going to do that! But we are going to ask, in light of James 5:15, about sin in your life, anything that you need to confess. Because sometimes, not all the time, sickness is linked to sin. 

The passage that comes to mind is the church that is abusing communion in Corinth and as a result some of the people are weak and ill and have even died (1 Cor 11:30). That suffering was preventable. It was self-inflicted. I think it’s important to point this out because not all suffering is the same. The man who has smoked for 50 years and has lung cancer is not the same as the boy who has lymphoma at age 10. There is such a thing as self-induced suffering. The person who is sexually promiscuous should not be surprised when they contract a venereal disease. That suffering was preventable. And the first step in that prayer of faith for healing is addressing honestly the sin that might be causing the affliction. And it just might be that God has used sickness in your life to get your attention… to get you to wake up to your own sinful behavior that has to stop. God’s been known to do that from time to time. God will sometimes use afflictions in your life to get your attention. 

To be honest this is really pretty practical. If a person is a serial fornicator, what good does it do for us to pray for him or her to experience physical healing? They’ll just go right on fornicating. The goal in this is not ultimately physical healing. The goal ultimately is spiritual in nature. We are spiritual shepherds as elders, not doctors. We are here to help you live a life of honor and integrity and righteousness before the world. 

So if you ask your elders to pray for you and anoint you with oil, we’ll do it. But be ready. We might ask you, “Do you have something you need to confess? Do you think the LORD might be trying to get your attention with this sickness concerning a sin matter in your life?” Just be ready for that. 

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And to that you might say, “Boy, that’s serious, Pastor Tony. Can I get out ahead of that? Can I do something to prevent that sinfulness from causing physical ailments in my life?” Yes, you can. I’m glad you asked. Here’s a second characteristic of a healthy church. 

2) A healthy church is a church of confession (5:16-18)

If the only time you ever confess your sins to another Christian is just before you get anointed with oil by your elders, that’s not good. And that’s why James says this. Look at verse 16.

James says, “Therefore ἐξομολογέω”! That is a fantastic Greek word. Let’s say that word together: ἐξομολογέω. λέγω means “to speak” or “use words.” You can see the word logos (“word”) in that word λέγέω. ὁμοῦ means “together.” And ἐκ or ἐξ means “out of” or “outside of.” I know it’s dangerous to derive a word’s meaning from its etymology, but I think this is an instance where the etymology helps us with the word. What does ἐξομολογέω mean? It means to “talk it out together” (i.e. “confess”). 

“Talk what out, Pastor Tony?” Look at verse 16. “Your sins.”

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

Now is this supposed to be limited to the elders? Is this something that you only do when you get together with your elders to be anointed with oil? I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s what James is saying. He’s saying keep a short list of your sins with your peers. He’s saying get people around you who can keep you accountable, so you don’t have sins that pile up and then God has to use sickness to get your attention. And then when you go to the elders, you don’t have to worry about some hidden sin that is preventing you from getting healed when they pray for you. 

Let me be a little more direct here. Men, get some men in your life… women, get some women into your life... who will pray for you and will confess their sins to you. And then you confess your sins to them. In other words, get into a small group or a discipleship group or a mutually beneficial relationship with someone at church where you can James 5:16 with them every week! Do accountability with someone. Every week. Every month! Every time you gather! This is really important that we obey James 5:16 in the context of the church.  

And to that you might say, “I don’t do accountability, Pastor Tony. I don’t do confidentiality. You know what they say: ‘Two can keep a secret; if one of them is dead.’” 

“I don’t do transparency, Pastor Tony. I don’t do accountability. I don’t do James 5:16.” Well too bad for you! You are missing out on one of the good things that God has graciously given us: community and fellowship in the body of Christ. Do you know how liberating it is as a Christian to be kept accountable by people who love you and pray for you? Do you know how healthy that is? 

You know I’ve been a pastor for a while now. And I’ll tell you, you know what I think keeps people from leaving their families and chasing some sin fantasy of theirs? I don’t think it’s strictly me getting up here on Sunday mornings and saying, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” For some of you, that works. You want to do the right thing. But for others, it takes more than that. It takes the loving and caring relationships of people in your life who tell you, “Dude, you better stay away from that!” Or “Friend, that sin in your life is like a little shop of horrors. You keep feeding that thing, and it will destroy you!” 

And by the way, when you look for friends to confess your sins to and pray for you, keep this in mind. Look at the end of verse 16. 

The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

Now let’s talk about small groups for a second. The reason that we vet your small group leaders and train them and encourage them is because, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” Are your small group leaders perfect? No. Are your elders perfect? No. But they care about you. And the reason James says, “confess your sins to one another and pray for one another” and then right after that says, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” is because he knows that human nature will lead you to be accountable with someone who is just as sinful, maybe even more sinful than you are. That way you feel good about yourself. “At least I’m better than this guy over here.” 

The point here that James is making is if you really want to be healed (physically but also spiritually), if you really want your prayers answered, if you really want to grow healthy as a believer, find a righteous man or woman and confess to them. Better yet find a room full of righteous men or women and confess to them. That’s when your spiritual growth will accelerate. That’s when you will see God move and do amazing things. Why? Because, if I could go King James on you for a moment, “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (5:16, KJV).

Speaking of “a righteous man” look at verse 17.

17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, 

I go King James when I want to emphasize something. James goes to the OT. 

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. 

I heard a pastor say once that James 5:17-18 was one of his favorite passages in the Bible. And when I heard that I was really shocked. I was like, “Really, these verses?” “Shouldn’t your favorite verse be like John 3:16 or Romans 10:9-10 or something?” 

But here’s why he said that. He said he loves this passage because of that statement in verse 17, “a nature like ours.” He said the reason that he loves this passage is because what James is saying here is that Elijah wasn’t some superhero of the OT. He’s not like this super-human specimen of power and majesty. James says, “He was just like you.” Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. We don’t think of him that way, do we? We think he was a superhero like Spiderman. We couldn’t possibly see answers to prayer like he did in his day! 

But James says, “Not so fast! Not so fast, Christian. Elijah was just like you. He was just like you. He even had his bouts of depression and despair. He even felt like a failure sometimes.” He had a crazed, despotic, Phoenician Queen named Jezebel who wanted him dead. And Israel was being ruled by the worthless King Ahab. You think you have it tough in our day? Elijah had it tougher. And yet he sought God and he prayed, and God did incredible things through his prayers, even changing the economic circumstances of his country to get their attention. 

And he prayed for a drought in Israel! That’s a huge prayer. That would mean economic devastation for that country. Just so you know, there was no Lake Superior in the middle of Israel to draw water from if there’s a drought. There’s no Edward’s Aquifer to draw from. If it doesn’t rain, people die. And Elijah, a man just like us, prayed for rain to stop. And it stopped. Then he prayed for rain to resume. And it resumed.

Here’s the point. God loves to answer the prayers of righteous men and women. God is responsive to the prayers of his saints. He is. Does that mean he is going to answer all of our prayers? No. Does that mean God is going to answer all our requests for healing? No. But healthy churches pray. They cry out to God. In good times and bad times, they cry out to God. And a healthy church is a praying church. 

Let me ask you, church? How’s your prayer life? Are you cheerful right now? Are you suffering? Are you ill? Are you praying through those things? Are you processing those realities through your relationship with God, even in the community of faith that God has provided—the church? This church needs to be a house of prayer. We need to be men and women who are committed to prayer. And that can so easily slip away from us. Don’t let that happen.  

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Now quickly, let me finish this passage up. And let me finish the Book of James up too. I said at the beginning of this message that I want to give you three things that healthy people and healthy churches do from James 5:13-20. To be honest, James, closing on prayer, would be great. If I was going to close out a book of the Bible, that’d be the perfect way to close it out… with an encouragement towards prayer. That’s the way that many NT letters close out their books with some kind of reference to prayer. But before James closes this letter, he gives us one additional thing that healthy churches do. Let me summarize it for you this way.  

3) A healthy church is a church of intervention (5:19-20)

James says in verse 19,

19 My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, 20 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. 

Now just to be clear, I see this verse as a climactic statement for the entire book of James. So I want you to think back on everything that we’ve studied in the last two months. Think about all the sermons that have been preached. Think about all the topics that have been brought up: 1) being a doer not just a hearer of God’s word, 2) faith without works, 3) partiality, 4) Wisdom from above, 5) the improper uses of the tongue, 6) the warnings to the rich, etc. Think about all these things that James has warned us about and taught us about. Think about even prayer in today’s message. Think about all of it. 

Got it? Got it all in your mind? Now let’s read verses 19-20 again.   

19 My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, 

If you see a Christian getting out of control with their tongue… if you see a fellow believer accumulating wealth and not using it properly… if you see a Christian saying they believe with their mouths, but not living out their faith in action… if you see anyone wandering from the truth… bring them back! 

By the way this is not James talking to the elders; this is James talking to everyone. That statement “my brothers” is a general reference to all the Christians in the church, the “brethren” of the church. This is a command for everyone. 

And also this isn’t a general command for Christians to get entrenched in the culture wars. We shouldn’t expect our culture to be obedient to Christ. They have no allegiance to Christ. But for a Christian who knows the truth and wanders from the truth, James says bring them back. 

20 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. 

This is not a believer who is trying to follow Christ and makes mistakes along the way. This is someone wandering from the truth. Maybe wandering from the church? Let’s face it, we are all a little “prone to wander” in our lives, aren’t we? This is not a disowning of the faith, this is a drifting from the faith. And it happens.

This is someone who conspicuously starts missing church. They don’t return your phone calls or text messages. They are disconnected and apathetic about the things of the Lord. They are sulky and sullen. They are spiritually lackluster and listless. 

What is our responsibility as a church in those matters? What do we do? Here’s what we do. We warn them. We express our love for them. We draw them back to Christ. We may even need to ask some tough questions. We may even, if there is unrepented sin in their lives, need to enact church discipline. The goal of church discipline is ultimately to restore. It’s to protect the spiritual health of the church and bring people into a place of spiritual health. Sometimes it’s needed. 

Now all this talk about saving a person’s soul from death and covering over a multitude of sins. We need to be careful with this. When we go after a wandering sinner, we need to be clear that we aren’t the ones ultimately that are doing the saving. It’s kind of like what I said about the anointing of oil by elders. It’s not the elders that do the healing and it’s not the oil. It’s the Lord that does the healing. In verses 19-20, it’s not us who does the rescuing, it’s ultimately the Lord. But we can be God’s instrument in that process. We can be used by God to restore a backslidden believer. 

Let me reiterate these one more time. 

1) A healthy church is a church of intercession (5:13-15) 

2) A healthy church is a church of confession (5:16-18)

3) A healthy church is a church of intervention (5:19-20)

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These are the final words of the Apostle James in his letter to us. Do you believe them? Do you receive them? Let me close by saying this. Tell me if you’ve heard this before. “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only…” (James 1:22). I read that somewhere… where was that? O yeah, the Book of James. Intercession. Confession. Intervention. Let’s do these things as the church of Jesus Christ. Amen? Pray with me.