Praise the unto you, and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, amen. Let us hear the word of God as we find written in the book of James, reading there in the 5th chapter, beginning at the 13th verse. If any among you afflicted, let him pray. Is any Mary, let him sing songs.
Is any sick among you? 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. And the prayer of the face shall save the sick and the Lord shall raise him up. And if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.
Confess your faults one to another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man of aless much. Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not reign, and it rang not on the earth by the face of three years in six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave reign, and the earth brought forth her fruit.
Rather than if any one of you do err from the truth and one convert him, let him know that he which converted the sinner from the earth of his way shall save us all from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins. Now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight. O Lord, our strength and our redeemer, amen. Good morning, dear friends, and Christ Jesus.
I hope that all of us are here in church this morning and at the call of our soul, that we do want to worship our God. Today's an oath of 19 Sunday afternoon. That means that we are gradually coming to the close of another church's year. Now the word of God that I just read is taken out of the book of James as it was last Sunday if you recall.
James is writing to the Christians of his day, and in the text this morning he is writing to them about a common problem that affects all of us. It's a nahtihwan, it's a very disturbing one, it's one that really perplexes us. It's the subject of illness, the subject of sickness when we heard in our body. James is writing to the Christians of his day, and he's saying this, is anyone among you afflicted?
Is there anyone to whom I'm writing? Are you afflicted? Are you ill? Are you sick?
Are you hurting in your body? Are you suffering? James says, then pray. Let him pray to God for healing.
And today James has a stick to you and me from the word of God, we who are Christians in the 20th century, speaking to us about this subject of sickness, this subject of illness. When we are hurting in our bodies, he says to you and me, are you afflicted? Are you ill? Are you suffering illness?
If so, it takes us I plead with you. Pray, won't you please pray. And ask God for healing. You and I may say this morning, James, how in the world can you ask us when we're healing and when we're sick to pray for healing?
We may say, oh, I'd like to say that's fine, James. But you may live in your life and I may live in mine, we may say, what does it do? To pray for healing? Some of us may say this morning, I've prayed for healing, but I've still got my illness.
I've still got that hurt in my body. James, why do you typically can't lie and call upon us that if we're ill, we are to pray for healing when we pray, nothing happens? What do you do? Nothing happens there.
I know results, but I've still got my pain. I've still got my illness. Oh, don't catalyze us, James. But James calls to you and to me this morning as Christians and this thing of being sick.
James says, are you afflicted? Are you hurting in your body? He says, I plead with you and I take with you. Pray, pray for healing and you would die with it.
What good does it do? And James says, don't you realize that the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man of ill is much or in simple language he says to you and me this morning? Don't you know that the prayer of a righteous man, it brings about powerful results. You and I may say again to James, James, do you mean to say that when I pray for healing, that this brings powerful results in my life.
But when I have God to heal my sickness when I'm hurting in my body, that I can rest assured that my prayer will bring about drastic and powerful results. And we may say, where are those results, James? What good does it do? I have prayed for and laid.
I've still got my illness. I'm still hurting in my body. The James would remind you and me that the prayer of a righteous man, it avails much. It brings tremendous and powerful results.
Even though you and I may say, but I've still got my illness. I'm still sick. I'm still troubled. I am still afflicted.
But James would remind you and me in the first place that when we pray a prayer for healing, that this prayer joins us to God who again has shown his tremendous power in glorious results by the power he has brought this universe into existence and he still controls it. We may say, where are these results that you get when you pray for healing? Where are they? I don't see them.
I've still got my sickness. Where are they, James? And James would say that's strange. You mean you don't see any results of your prayer for healing?
You mean that in your life there is nothing good that has come? James says that's rather strange when prayer joins a God who has omnipotent power, who has brought a universe by the power of his word into existence and who controls it in his hands by power. And you mean to say that prayer doesn't do any good for healing, that you've still got your illness and therefore there are no benefits and there are no great and tremendous results. Then James, he was telling the people of his day, well look at a light to the Prophet.
He was a man just like we are no different from us. He was a man, he was a child of God and look, he prayed one day that it shouldn't rain. And James says, for three and a half years there was no rain and there was no dew on the face of the earth. Then he prayed again after three and a half years and then there came rain upon the earth.
Oh, what tremendous power and James would say to you in me this morning, do you mean to say it doesn't really good to pray for healing? He would remind us that if prayer joins us to a God who has shown his omnipotence in his power that by the power of his word he was able to bring a universe into existence and he still controls it. James says, maybe you're not looking in the right place. Prayer for healing brings tremendous results.
Have you forgotten the glorious results in the past of healing? How many of us this morning? When were you old and when again were hurting? We forget the past.
How many times in the past had you and I prayed for healing and we have gotten it? How many headaches have you had in the past? How many corns have you had on your little toes or on your big toes? How many times have you had a toothpaste?
How many times have you had a coat and you and I may say, but these are little things that I have you know this. That death can come from any one of those things. Who would you and I to be little? Well, the healing of God in the past.
If we would just stop this morning and look back, we got to say to ourselves, just prayer for healing. Do many good? You're alive right now, aren't you and so am I. It must bring tremendous results, evidently you and I, we're not looking in the right place.
We forgot to look back through the years of our lives and through the number of times we've been healed. And to say, but I'm alive. Why? Because when we pray for healing and omnipotent God, a lot of results.
So many times, even when we literally realized it, in the past, where you and I on the brink of death, but we're alive. Why? Because the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man, James, it abeels much, it brings tremendous results. And what we ought to do today then, if we're hurting in body, if you and I have got an illness, if we're sick, we ought to say to ourselves, I'm going to pray like James, I'm going to pray for healing.
And I'm going to therefore be determined that when I pray for healing, I am also going to use the means by which God heals bodies. We are very much upset about this one incident that James mentioned. He said, if you're sick, call for the elders of the Church. Well, now, when Paul and Barnabas went out on their first missionary journey, they established a little Christian congregation.
They let men in charge. They were laypeople. They were elders, or cheters, as they were called. And again, James says, now, if you're ill, you called the lay leaders of the church and let them come and pray.
And he says, anointing or loving the body with oil, the name of the Lord. A very simple acclimation is this. Oil was a therapeutic thing that was used. It was a medicinal thing.
You just eat in the peril of the good Samaritan when he poured in oil and wine. In other words, James says, let them come and use what he was. loved the body of the sick person to make him comfortable, that this may be used and then let them pray. We ought to say to ourselves, in our brain, we're also going to not forget the various means that God has given in medicine.
And in surgery, I know that there are some Christians, they're all right in the church, they're saying, but I'm going to get healing without losing medicine. I'm going to get healing without going into surgery. It's just as ridiculous as to say, I'm going to live, and I'm going to stop eating. I'm going to stop taking fluids into my body.
And I'm going to expect God to keep me alive without my eating and without my drinking. And you and I know that God's given food, and God's given drink that you and I may use these natural things. In connection with prayer to stay alive. God expects you and me to use the blessings of medicine, to use the blessings of surgery, then to pray.
So that's far for healing, remembering the number of times in the past that God has healed us, then there comes this comfort that we are in the hands of one for whom all things are possible. When I can in prayer turn to him, and I can see results in the years past in my life, then I've got to say nothing is impossible for him, the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man. I'm telling you it brings tremendous results. But you and I may sit here this morning, we may say, but I've still got my pain.
I've still got my illness. And I prayed, when I are the results, and Cain says, why the prayer of a righteous man, it brings tremendous results, powerful results. You and I may say, where? Evidently we're not looking, where we ought to be looking, because in the second place, James reminds us that our prayer for healing, it joins us to God, who has shown his glorious power of love through Christ for us, and bringing about tremendous results.
That in Christ Jesus, God's love is brought into this world what the gift of deliverance to me, turn of death and hell, and has brought the gift of eternal life. What a God, that you and I, when we pray for healing, we're turning to a God whose love has been tremendous, that he said he'd only be got to sons of the world, who came to the world and became a human being, born of the Virgin Mary, who died for you and me, he bore our guilt and our punishment on the cross, who had lost the dance from the dead, that we might know that in him there is deliverance from hell, for all men who desire to do the gift of eternal life. We say, oh, what tremendous power to love, and you mean to say then, that when do you and I, when we're hurting in our body? And we turn in prayer to God and ask for healing, that nothing happens, that we say, what good does it do, that there are no results?
Perhaps we're not looking at the right place, because James would remind us that that love and Christ Jesus assures us that God always grants healing, or if he doesn't, it's because he gives nothing better than healing, a greater appreciation of Christ. We may say this money, why is it that my illness doesn't go away? Why is it that it's here? Why is it that when I pray so firmly to this blood and you say, that he has a tremendous power of love, and yet provided eternal life?
Why is it that it doesn't seem to do any good? Perhaps it's this, that we're looking only for healing, and perhaps he's a love of the same-less and son, I've got a greater blessing. Then the healing of your body right now, I'd like to have you know me better. It isn't it, it's pains when we're flat on our backs, and the onus, how Jesus begins to live in our lives.
How you and I, we may just be here, say Jesus, and now, the party begins to hurt, and we're alone with him, we start to talk to him, and go, what results come? Always seems so near, doesn't he? He seems near than he's ever been in our lives, and we just the very back that we tell him how we feel, and that we are afflicted, oh what comfort it brings, and we get to know him better, and he brings us closer to him and our faith against the pro, and we begin to appreciate Calvary more than we ever have, and our life, he begins to be a reality, and we say to ourselves, oh what would we do if it hadn't been for Jesus coming into the world to bring eternal life who died for us? What would I do without him?
Here is my cruel of great price. Here is the great value of my life, and we grow in faith and incapacity, and fair life becomes something that is terrific and wonderful. When we're made to where the God begins to live, and we come to church and it means something, we begin to say, oh this is the word of God, something that's happened, we have come to know him better, and there has been an intimate relationship. Jesus says, maybe you're not looking for the right place.
You are looking for healing, and I said, there's something better than healing for the time being, all that you might know me better, that you might find peace, the joy of forgiveness, the assurance of eternal life that I might live as I've never lived in your life before, because now you have had an intimate experience. Perhaps you and I aren't looking in the right place. James says, oh I plead with you, if you're real and you're hurting in your body, don't forget to pray, and don't forget to pray for healing, because James says, the pair of our right is man, it brings tremendous results, and it does, it always brings healing, or if it doesn't, it brings something better, that Jesus begins to really live. When do I have experience that, we're going to say to ourselves, whenever the illness comes, I'm going to do what James said, I'm going to call upon God for healing, and I'm going to call upon him, and I'm going to know that, I'm going to look for Jesus, then we're going to be determined that we're going to call upon him for healing, even if we're burdened with the idea that this illness that we've brought on ourselves, that we're being punished.
This is the thing that force salt in the wound, isn't it? When we say to ourselves, I'm ill, because I brought this on myself. James rather alludes to it too, when he talks about the elders playing over the sick person, and he said, and if he has sinned, his sin shall be forgiven to him, confess your false one to another, and pray for one another. Suppose, and I got to say to myself, I'm being punished, to be punished by illness means to have a foretaste of hell.
You'd be surprised. How many have the salt poured in their wounds? You'd be surprised how many say to me, I'm sick today, pastor, I haven't been in church in 20 years. We have walked by that church, and Christ is nothing.
We haven't brought our kids to send these schools. Our kids don't know what it means to be confirmed. We have walked by, and we have slapped him in the face. Now I'm flat on my back, and I've had people say to me, I know I'm being funny, and right you are.
Jesus, you think he's gonna give you up without a fight? You'll think that he's gonna let you and me go to hell, and not do something, he's gonna stand, and here comes sickness. You young friends, you have been talking to me about venereal disease, and I have been telling you that here is sickness that comes as a direct result of sin. Let men tell you that promiscuity is all right.
But the end promiscuity there will come to illnesses as surely as you're living. Gonnery or cephalous or both? Some of you young friends of athlete, which is the worst. When cephalous comes, that's the worst it affects the brain.
It affects the nervous system. It can be carried on for the next generation. You might bring children into the world who are retired into work at both, who hadn't even had their minds. This is what can happen.
When a man has been promiscuous and he has come up with this disease, he can say, this is punishment, God given me a foretaste of hell. That we may say, what do you do then? What do you do then? We still turn to Jesus Christ.
Remember the story of the gospel lesson today when they brought the man who was on the stretcher. And Jesus looked at him here as a paralytic. And the first thing Jesus said, son, be of good cheer. Thy sins be forgiven.
He looked in that man's soul. That man had greater needs than the heavy body healed. That man was miserable down in here. Whatever it was, it was bothering him.
Jesus forgiving his sins. And if this is the conviction in your life and mind, that whatever our name is we brought it on ourselves and we are being punished because we turned our back on Jesus Christ, remember, friend, they can always turn around and ask me for forgiveness. We have holy communion today. Some may say, well, if my illness is then self-fossed and this is the way I turn my back on him and I have walked out on him, can I come to holy communion?
You may say, Jesus may snub me. He may get me a full shoulder, but may I remind you that in the Lord's upper, when he says, here is my body and my blood for every sin that once said, he doesn't have a full shoulder. This is his love and his mercy. There is no reluctance.
He says, oh, fine, I'll forgive you. Son, be of good cheer. Thy sins be forgiven. And then he's fed.
Take up your bed and go home. But we may have the comfort. That when we turn and repentance, even though we have that horrible conviction that arse the illness has been self-caused. Be able to say, I'm forgiven now.
It's no longer punishment. Perhaps now it's only going to be temporary. Perhaps it has accomplished its purpose. And now it is not going to remain.
Now the comfort that it may be temporary, the tireless of its nature, when we have come back to a way, living faith, have the joy of the forgiveness of sins. James was talking about something that played you and me, this thing of illness. It's always different to know when it gets you and me. And James says, I have to be the prey.
You and I may say, things I'd like to pray. And I'd like to pray for healing. But after all, what goodness do I? I still got my y'all as I'm still hurting.
But James says, don't forget the effect you'll fervent prayer of a righteous man in the debate. It brings tremendous result because James assures us, when would I pray to God for healing? That this prayer joins us to our God who has shown his mighty mercy in the Holy Spirit in bringing you and me to faith in Jesus Christ. Wouldn't it be strange if when we called upon God, whose mercy is immense and whose mercy has no beginning and no ending, it is so tremendous?
That if in the Holy Spirit, God has called you and need to face, that when we see such tremendous results, that we wouldn't when we ask Him for healing, how many people do you and I know isn't this most disgusting thing and you can't understand? How many people do we know that we deal with everything, who have nothing but scorn for the word of God and for Christ? When you talk about Him, they wouldn't be caught dead in church, and they're nice people. And you talk about the deity of Christ and they laugh at you.
And you talk about the inspiration of Scripture. And they think they're crazy. And you talk about Christ rates and the dead and they think that something's wrong, you're an idiot. And they have everything that you advance, I don't do except Christ.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You and I say, what world's wrong? Getting my cameo of what's put in their pockets. And all that porno about the intense, everything's just like anything about.
And you and I would say, why you might as well accept that even if it's wrong, it's better than to reject it. Yet the Holy Spirit has brought you and me, and has overcome that vocal resistance in us. He has overcome it and brought you in need of faith in Christ. We have accepted Jesus as the Savior.
But we believe that He pied the rules again. Why a tremendous result of the mercy of God. We didn't deserve it. And therefore, King's to have you and me know that when God in His mercy and the Holy Spirit has brought up your tremendous result in your life and mind, then it's this Holy Spirit that also brings you and me to pray, not my will, but I will be done in this illness.
Then causes you and me to be an influence on the man who was roughly resisting the Holy Spirit to be simply an influence to you when I can never fathom. What happens? Maybe we're looking at the wrong spot when we pray for healing. We pray for healing to our God knowing that it can do everything.
And to know that He has saved us, man, the Holy Spirit leads you and me to say, oh, heal me, God, if it be your will, if this is best for me, if this is from the standpoint of my eternal welfare, if this is good, but nevertheless, not my will, God, your will be done and then we see some real results. When we stop murmuring, we've accepted it, and we've stopped complaining, and we know that it's God's will, and we've rejoiced in the fact that again, a God has given us strength to bear it. What an influence. James says, if a man erred from the truth and you bring him back, he says, remember this, you have saved somebody from death.
Maybe there's somebody in your family, maybe it's your husband or your wife, maybe it's your son or maybe it's your daughter. And perhaps this is why illness have come to you or to me, but in the way in which you and I accept this, in the way in which we receive it, and we do not murmur and complain, in the way in which to them is that God is all right, that we may be the influence that will save a husband or wife or a son or daughter from hell. I've been to the state all of us will say, wait on. If the illness will save my husband or my wife, then my son that has gone to stay and my daughter that doesn't care, lay it on, God.
If I can save them from hell. It's all right, it's all right, God. Oh yes, James says, if you're hurtin', be sure to pray. When do you wanna say I'm gonna pray for healing?
And I know I'm gonna look for results, I'm gonna be not gonna look in the right place. Then we're going to accept this, that when God says no, and when God says no, it's going to mean death. We will say to ourselves, this is the best answer. These are the best results.
You know the time's gonna come in your life and mine, when we're hurting in our body, we're going to pray for healing, and we're going to look for a result, and healing isn't going to come. It's not only going to be permanent, but it's going to be fatal. That God's going to say I'm sorry, son, but my answer's no. My answer's going to be death.
This is going to bring about death. You and I may say, what good is it to do to pray? Why no is an answer to prayer, a tremendous result, and death is the best answer in healing, because death becomes the gateway to eternal life. The thought says, I'm ready to take you home.
I want to bring you home with me. I am ready now, I've got you all set. I have brought you so close to me, but now you're weary. And now this is only so I'm not going to take it away, and it's going to be fatal, and it's going to bring about your death, and Jesus take it, I'll be right with you, and you can live with me in the eternal mansions.
James experienced this. We wonder who was this James? There were two disciples, two apostles, and over the name of James James, the greater James the less, James was not any one of them. James the greater James the son of the devotee, who was the brother of John, and James the less was the son of Alpheus, but we are told that the brothers of Jesus did not believe that Jesus was the Christ until after his resurrection, now if you turn to Matthew 1355, you will find the four brothers of Jesus are mentioned, that he had brothers, and one was named James, and another was Joseph, and one was Simon, and one was June, or Judas.
This James here is the brother of Jesus, which means this, that Mary was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus, and the word about that, and Joseph knew her not, until Jesus was born. But the word of God leads us to believe that after Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph had other sons, and here are four of them, and this James was a son of Mary and Joseph, after Jesus was born, and the same name was Jesus, and this James the brother Lord has the letter of the New Testament, and so did Jews, and the name was Judas, but we call him Jews. He has the letter, he was called James the just, he was the leader of the church in Jerusalem, and they're told that one day his enemies grabbed him, and they now feed him and put him on top of the temple in Jerusalem, and they said, you denounce Jesus Christ as the son of God, and we're going to throw you down, and he said, I will believe that my brother is no less than the son of God, and they throw you down, he was praying too in suffering, but it ended in death, and on the way down, he says to see, and on the way down, I imagine he was against, saying, brother Jesus, you who are also my favorite, I'm coming home, mother Mary, you who are my mother, even as you were the mother of Jesus, the son of God, I'm coming home, Joseph, you are my father, I'm coming home, this is the greatest result, the greatest answer. But when I may sing on the glory road, we can say I prayed for help, I have prayed for him, but now the answer is no, and the answer is death.
Tremendous, wonderful, the greatest. If you and I can walk the glory road, we can say everything is just fine. To go to heaven, in the eternal mansions, my God and I, we again, my God and I, we walk into the field together, we walk and talk as good friends should into, we trust our hands, our voices ring, but laughter, my God and I, walk through the meadows you, we can walk through with my God and I, we go in the field with him, we can say, this earth will pass, and where that common fight for such a sickness and hurting in my body, but God and I will go on ending way. This is the great result, this is the great answer.
God and I, when there will be no heat, when the answer is no, when the answer is death, we will say, all right God, my God and I, we go on ending way, that's the best. The peace of God which can't with all, you can understand me, keeping the nights of hearts and minds and Christ Jesus unto life everlasting.