James 5:13-20

Well, we’ve made it to the end of James. Let’s review what we’ve looked at since January:

We looked at how true saving faith responds properly to trials, temptations, to the Word of God and to God’s standards of holy living. That was chapter 1. In chapter 2 we looked at what our response should be to people of different social classes and what it means to produce good works from our faith. We then looked at how dangerous our mouths can be when God doesn’t have control over them, what it means to have heavenly wisdom and how we should be in the world, but not of the world. Friends of God rather than friends of the world. That was all in chapter 3. Chapter 4 showed us how we need to hit our knees and submit ourselves to God and His will in all aspects of our live, including our planning for the future. And then last week we talked some more about the suffering we will endure but what our view of it should be and what our view of money and truthfulness should be.

So here we are. At the end. If you remember back at the beginning when we started I mentioned that this letter is a little different from the other letters of the New Testament because of the way James opens. Most of the letters begin with a nice introduction on who’s writing, who it’s for, and then giving them a welcoming “Grace and peace to you…” type line. But as we have seen throughout James doesn’t beat around the bush. He welcomes his readers with a ‘I’m James, I’m writing to you, let’s get to it’ and he’s off and running with the meat of his letter.

Well the same is true for the end of his letter. Every other letter of the New Testament ends with a short prayer of blessing, with most closing with ‘Amen’ or ‘Grace to you’. There’s none of that here. As we’ll talk about in a sec, James ends with ‘make sure you are out there saving the lost. The End. Get out there.’

But before he ends, he repeats a theme that he talked about in the beginning of his letter. Verse 13: “Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray.” This echoes the beginning of chapter 1 where he talks about what we as a mature Christian be doing when we are facing a trial. We shouldn’t grumble about it, say the whole ‘whoa is me’ speech. That’s what the world says. Instead scripture says we need to pray to God for wisdom. This is nothing new to us. God is the same when we are struggling through something as when we are blessed beyond our imagination. He’s the same God when we fail the test as when we ace it.

This next part of the book, v.14-15 is one of the most mistranslated. The Greek word that is translated in the NIV as ‘sick’ is ‘astheneo’ (a-s-then-e-o). Many people use it to refer to the physical healing that comes from prayer. But the context of the rest of the chapter indicates a more spiritual healing that takes place. The spiritual suffering that comes from being tested for a long time, the trials of life. They may be weakened from battle, have become discouraged with things and with God, may have lost the will to continue the fight, maybe even played with sinful thoughts. That’s when they are to seek out the spiritually strong, the ‘elders of the church’ to help lift them up. Galatians 6:1 repeats this “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin you who are spiritual should restore him gently”.

But that means there is a great call on those who are spiritually strong. The leaders, even the leaders here, are given the burden of those under them. They should expect to have the wounded, exhausted, broken sheep come to their shepherds who will intercede for them and ask God to strengthen them. It’s as Paul said in Acts 6:4 – “We will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”

You can see the impact that prayer has, look at the end of v.16: “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” But we aren’t talking about someone saying a quick but powerful prayer and everything will be better. It’s not about being a faith healer. James is referring to continuous prayer. We need to be constantly going before the Lord asking for help. Jesus instructed us to do this in Luke 18 when he told the Parable of the Persistent Widow. In v.1 he says: “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” This is not a Parable that Scripture is leaving to us to interpret. There are some that are kinda vague and we can take different ways, but here we are told what we should learn from this parable. Pray constantly.

James gives us one last example to drive home his point, an example that the Jewish believers who are reading this would be very familiar with: Elijah. To get the back story on Elijah, you have to go to 1 Kings 17-18. For the sake of time, basically the kings of Israel at the time of Elijah are doing some pretty bad things. They have turned as far from the Lord as they can, building idols to other gods and doing all sorts of nasty things. So God sends Elijah the prophet to rebuke them and try to bring them back to Himself. So Elijah prays and God stops the rains from falling on Israel for 3 ½ years after which the king at the time, Ahab, and Elijah meet on Mount Carmel and have a showdown of the prophets. All the false prophets the king could gather, 450 false prophets vs 1, Elijah. The contest: prepare a bull sacrifice on an alter, pray to your god and which ever god sends fire down to light the alter is the true God. False prophets go first, trying to pray to Baal all day long. Nothing. Elijah even taunts them telling them to pray louder. Nothing.

Elijah’s turn, he rebuilds an old alter to the Lord, puts his sacrifice on top, even douses the whole pile, wood and all, with water. 3 times they poured water on. Now at this point, it would take a real boy scout to light this fire, everything is soaked. But when Elijah prayed to God, he sent down fire that not only burned the sacrifice, but the wood, the rocks around it, the dirt under it, even the extra water that had overflowed from all the dumping. Gone. And it worked, because 1 Kings 18:39 describes what happened: “When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, “The Lord – he is God! The Lord – he is God.” And after this, he prayed again to God and the rains came back to the land.

So you can see a real-life application of prayer. This is an example of the prayer that was being prayed, matching the will of God. Elijah prayed, God listened and did it. That won’t always happen. Jesus praying on the Mount of Olives. Jesus prayed 3 times for God to take the cup from him. What was the cup? The crucifixion he was about to face. Mark 14:32-42 describes this if you want to look into it some more. Now it wasn’t that Jesus was out of line with God’s will. He was praying that God’s will be done. Jesus knew what was coming, the pain he was about to endure, and it overwhelmed him. But Jesus was faithful to God’s will to the end.

I’m sure you all have a story we can share of a time when you were struggling and you prayed and you felt God answer your prayers. Let’s look at the last 2 verses of James. James is not necessarily talking about going out and evangelizing on the street corner. Remember who he is talking to, “My brothers,”. In v.19 he is indicating that there may be some people who claim to be Christians, who claim to know God, who are going to “wander from the truth”. And what is the truth? The Word of God.

See the original Greek word used for “save” in v.20 is the most common use of the word for salvation. It’s used 110 times in the New Testament, 93 of those times referring to being saved spiritually. I think James is using these verses as an encouragement to all of us to examine our faith. If we know someone who claims to have a saving faith, but is walking contrary to what Scripture says, we need to talk to them. The way of the world leads to death. We are all going to die. It’s a fact. It’s a result of Adam and Eve’s disobedience of God in the Garden of Eden. But only when you put your faith in the Truth, and Jesus is the Truth according to John 14:6 “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”, it’s the only way you can be saved from an eternal death. And it’s only in putting your faith in Jesus that your sins, all of your sins, past present and future, are covered over in God’s eyes. He doesn’t see them anymore.

But the only way we are to turn a brother from wandering from the truth is to be solid on the truth. You can’t pull someone from the pool while you are balancing on the edge of the pool yourself. They’ll pull you in. You need to be firmly planted on the side. But even then, you will need some help to get them out of the pool. That’s where God comes in. God’s the only one who can save. We can paint them the best pictures of Christ, but Christ has to work in their lives. And what needs to happen for that person to cross the line, to accept Christ? He needs to pray. He needs to confess with his mouth and believe in his heart that he needs a savior. It’s the prayers to God that seals the deal. Prayer.

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On a personal note, I want to thank you all for following along as we studied the Book of James. It’s with a heavy, but confident, heart that I turn over the blog writing to Mike Shadle. As my wife and I embark on the next chapter of life that God has written for us, we look forward to seeing all the amazing things God is going to continue to do with this ministry. If you are in the Carroll County, Md area, I highly recommend you stop by some Tuesday. It truly is an amazing place to be. God Bless.

Front Porch Group Pics

This past meeting we got together most of our regular attenders and shot a couple of group pics. It was a little cold, but it was great to make a memory.

Click the ‘more’ to see more pics.

James 5:1-12

Do you guys remember how the passage we looked at last week started? Well, look. James 4:13 – “Now listen,” And what was the real translation of that Greek word? The NIV tames it down a little bit. Right, it was a call to attention. It was telling the people listening to this letter, you better pay attention to what I’m about to say. This is the way James starts out this chapter too. He’s calling people to listen. James is putting this on the same level of importance as last week because he is going to lay into a specific audience. Last week, he was ripping on the business owners and those who like to plan. He corrected them pretty plainly on how they should view the future.

Well, this week he is focusing on the rich people, the wealthy land owners, and pretty much anyone who values money over anything else.

James 4:13-17

This week, James is talking about the pride that comes from saying you will go somewhere and make money, or that you have the next couple of years planned out. As someone who is entering their 20’s, or already there, you may have a nice package planned:

Go to/finish college
get a degree
move here or there
get a nice job
find a husband/wife
buy a nice house
have some kids
get a couple of pets and so on

The only problem with that is that we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future.

James 4:1-12

This week in James we are going to examine the root or cause of our conflict with other people. James is actually going to unpack 3 different types of conflict:

Our conflict with others
Our conflict with ourselves
Our conflict with God

Just like last week, James starts out this section with a question: v1 – “What causes fights and quarrels among you?” Remember that he is writing this letter to the early church, so he’s asking this of believers. Since sin entered into the world, there has been fighting among people who say they know God. Beginning with Cain and Able in Genesis 4 then Lot and Abraham in Genesis 13. Even when Jesus was on the earth, there was division among believers. The disciples argued over who was the greatest in the kingdom as described in Luke 9:46-48 and in Mark 10 which you looked at in your groups. And especially in the early church, like a couple of weeks ago when James was talking about the people who wanted to become teachers at the beginning of Chapter 3 and as we will see here in Chapter 4. Paul was constantly playing referee in the early churches he started which you can read about in his letters to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 6:1-8, 14:23-40), Ephesians (Eph. 4:1-16), Galatians (Gal. 5:15), and Philippians (Phil. 4:1-3).

James 3:13-18

Now in this part of James’ letter, he poses a question to his readers. James 3:13, he asks “Who is wise and understanding among you?” Reading that you may start thinking to yourself, ‘Am I wise?’ and you may start to come up with reasons why you think you are. But what is wisdom? Scripture talks a lot about wisdom. The people of the Old Testament were all about gaining wisdom. So much so they use the word for ‘wisdom’ and ‘wise’ some 300 times. Solomon, in the book of Proverbs, uses it 100 of those times. Solomon was all about the wisdom, to the point that it’s what he asked God for when he was given the kingdom of Israel. In 1 Kings 3:5 God comes to Solomon, and tells him “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.” There’s no strings attached to that. God wants to bless Solomon. He’s the son of David, who followed God’s commands. What does Solomon ask for? V.9 tells us his response: “So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong.” He asks for wisdom. And God gives it to him, and more. As you read on you see that God gives him more wisdom than anyone else on earth, save Jesus, plus all the gold and power that he could ask for. And a result that request, we get the book of Proverbs and in it, Solomon is kind enough to tell us what wisdom is. Proverbs 9:10 says: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

Week off

We actually took a week of this week from our normal James study to watch a video from the Passion 2010 conference of Beth Moore talking about how God will equip us for whatever he puts us through. Sometimes we think that we need to be preparing ourselves for something, but in actuality God is the one that is preparing us. Even when things go bad, and we wish they never happened, it is God refining us for something that is to come. ALL of our experiences, good and bad, are for the Glory of God. They make us who we are today. Embrace it. Thank God for it. See you next week.

James 3:1-12

So last week we finished up chapter 2 as James was throwing out some heavy stuff in terms of our faith. We looked at 3 types of faith someone can have while claiming to be a Christian. Dead Faith. Demonic Faith. And Dynamic Faith. We are called into the dynamic faith because it is the hardest for us to contain inside of us. When the Holy Spirit has made its home in our heart, and is made alive through our pursuit of the Word, it comes alive and we cannot help but share the fruit with other people.

James 2:14-26

We are in the middle of James, chapter 2 and here we see him trying to illustrate the difference between having faith and doing deeds. It begins with faith and from that faith, works blossom, like the fruit from a tree. Faith, which comes first is a key doctrine in the Christian life:

The sinner is saved by faith (Eph 2:8-9)
The believer must walk by faith (2 Cor. 5:7)
With out faith it’s impossible to please God (Heb 11:6)
Anything we do apart from faith is sin (Rom. 14:23)

But what is faith? Before we start throwing that term around like it’s a baseball, what do we mean when we say you need to have faith?

James 1:26 – 2:13

We are now at the point in James where he is beginning to expand on what he introduced in the first chapter. We have looked at essentially 3 tests of our living faith:

How we respond to trials (1:3-12)
How we respond to temptations (1:13-18)
How we react to the Word of God (1:19-27)

We are going to finish looking at this last test quickly before we move into the next test James lays out for us: How we respond to favoritism (2:1-13)