Suffering and Prayer part 2

So, yeah, I'm going to try to get right into things here because I feel like there's a lot to cover. This is lesson, I think it's number 37. We are on the second week where we're covering chapter 5, verses 13 through 18. Now, last week we really didn't look at the verses much, other than reading them off the start, but last week was a real contextual study. I'm trying to bring these verses into the broader context. Let me read our verses again today, except I'm going to back up and include verse 12, because we want to... Actually, let me start with verse 11, because we want to include Job this morning in our context study. So I'm going to read from 11 down through 18. We count those blessed who endured. You have heard of the endurance of Job, and have seen the outcome of the Lord's dealings, that the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful.

But above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth, or with any other oath. But your yes is to be yes, and your no, no, so that you may not fall under judgment. Is anyone among you suffering? then he must pray. Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises. Is anyone among you sick?

Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed.

Now, there's a lot to cover in that. and we will see how much we can really cram through today. But I just want to kind of remind us of the context we looked at last week. that in James' overall letter, we said the theme has to do with patience and endurance through trials. And we said that James consistently points out that there are worthwhile results of that patient endurance. There's a fruitful production if you think of the farmer that he just talked about in verse 7.

We also talked about the fact that there is a contrast between pride and humility consistently throughout the book of James. And we noted particularly last week that God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble. And we say God is not opposed to the proud because he dislikes them. It's that the pride gets in the way of how he would bless them graciously.

And so there's something to do here with the removal of pride, maybe we could say. And so we want to now look just a little bit at Job. If you want to turn to Job chapter 27, we'll read a little verse there, but otherwise I'm just going to kind of talk about it.

And I wanted to ask the question, what is typically one of our first responses to a trial? A lot of times we're kind of saying, well, this isn't fair. Why is this happening to me? I don't deserve this. And there's a little or maybe a lot of merit mentality in that kind of thinking. There's pride in that, that I don't deserve this. What good thing do you have in you that would merit not deserving this?

But I want to think about Job because James is very intentional in bringing him up here and this is the immediate context of what we're looking at. So I think it's really important to think about And we can think about how did Job respond to his trial initially. We know his words in Job 121, naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I shall return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. In other words, I came into this world deserving nothing. I still don't deserve anything. No merit mentality, no pride that we see in that.

But after quite a long time of his friends accusing him of wrongdoing, you know, and kind of this long-term grind, this trial that just dragged on and on, and his friends are just, you know, wearing him down, what does Job begin to do? Well, he begins to defend himself. And this is where I want to look at Job 27 verses 2 to 6. In verse 2, Job begins his defense with an oath. That's why this is key to what James is saying. In verse 2 of chapter 27, Job says, as God lives, and to quickly summarize, What he's saying here, if we were to just look at the first part of verse 6, essentially, as God lives, I hold fast my righteousness and will not let it go. Joe has moved into full-fledged self-defense, and he does it with an oath.

Now, perhaps if you've been in that kind of position or situation of a false accusation, It's very easy to begin to swear by something. You know, I swear I'm innocent. I swear I didn't deserve it. Or I swear I don't deserve what's happening to me. And what James says here, he's like, you don't need to swear. You know, let your yes be yes and your no be no. And I think that's why That's why James is bringing this up. You know, James in this context has been describing believers who are being mistreated.

And like I said, it's a powerful temptation to start to defend yourselves in a situation like that. and to say, you know, I don't deserve this or I deserve better than this. You know, but as I said, when the word deserve kind of enters into our speech, we should realize that we're speaking out of the old nature and there's pride there. There's that sinful pride of life. Pride is exerting itself because we're essentially in a suffering situation. We're essentially beginning to blame God for being unfair in his dealings with us. And what's interesting about this, when we see that kind of mentality pop up in our lives when we recognize that self, the trial has begun to accomplish a very important purpose because self is being exposed. And the first step to growth is recognizing the self-life for what it is.

I was listening to those Miles Stanford recordings that Mike came across here. I don't know if, as he told all of you about them, there's three recordings that he came across and I've been listening to them and Miles said something to this effect. He said, the self-life Sorry, in his tape called The Self-Life, he said, God's primary aim in the life of the believer is to reveal the self-life, and he does this through everyday circumstances. I thought that really fits what we're talking about here.

These long-term trials, self becomes quite evident. Well, let's just mention quickly that Job, he did hit that point. But what was his ultimate response? And I think all of us, when we see the sin nature for what it is, when we see self responding like Job did, I swear, you know, I'll hold to my righteousness. But then God exposes that for what it is. And in Job 40, Job says, Behold, I am insignificant. What can I reply to you? And in chapter 42, verse 3, he says, I have declared that which I did not understand things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. So that gives us a little bit more of the context that James has in mind here. I think that's important to what we're looking at today.

And I tried to kind of rush through the notes I put on there because we need to get into sort of the verse by verse. So we've spent a lot of time now digging into the context. And now we want to try to take those contextual observations and see how they shape our understanding of these verses. When we come to this passage in James 5, most of us immediately begin by importing some meaning into the text. And some of that is because of wrong assumptions about a couple of key words. And we'll deal with those today. But our biggest problem is that we tend to take the verses out of the greater context that James has established. So, let's look at verse 13. In the first part of verse 13, James says, is anyone among you suffering? Then he must pray.

And the first thing, you know what? I have a PowerPoint for this. Sorry, I'm in all a rush here. I realize I'm not sharing my screen. Here, let's do that. The review portion, of course, didn't have a PowerPoint. The first thing that we notice here is that we should notice is that James does not say what we are to pray for.

But, you know, we almost instinctively insert the idea into there that we should pray for the trial to be removed. At least that's my, in how many times I've read this in the past, it just seems natural, right? Like, well, you got a trial, you're suffering, let's pray that it ends, right? That's what we do every Sunday before Sunday school, right? How many trials have we prayed continue on? Lord, please continue that trial. But I don't think we can afford to make that assumption. Because let's think about the context that we've been studying. James' main theme is enduring trials patiently, not getting out of them. He's never talked about that, right? James has not talked about praying for the end of trials, but he has talked previously about praying in the midst of trials.

So in James 1, 5 through 6, he says, but if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without any doubting. So it's interesting that that phrase, let him ask, is in the imperative mood. In other words, he must ask. Could it be that James is coming back to this imperative command here?

It seems to me like it is. So, now, I don't know if you still have your printout from last week that we marked up, but if you do, in the margin by James 5 verse 13, you could just mark in 1 verse 5 in the margin. where it says, he must pray. You can just mark in one verse five. There may be a connection there. But what does praying for wisdom have to do with being in a trial?

We're going to come back to that at the end of the lesson. But for now, just make the mental note that in chapter three, when we were there, James talked about, you'll remember, wisdom from above. And he said that it is full of good fruit. Wisdom from above is full of good fruit. So we'll come back to that. But let's move on to the second part of verse three.

So, here he says, is anyone among you cheerful? He is to sing praises. Now, cheerful is an interesting verb. Youth a male. And the first part, youth, has the idea of do well. And the last part, thumos, is the word wrath, or that idea of wrath or fierceness. Now, if you look it up in the dictionaries, most of the Greek dictionaries will tell you something, to be of good cheer, to be in good spirits, and that's the way it's translated here, is anyone among you cheerful? But I want to look at the only other use of this word in the New Testament, and it comes up in Acts 27, verse 25. Actually, it's used twice, in verse 22 and verse 25. So, we see two uses of the word. We're just going to look at verse 25.

These are Paul's spoken words, recorded by Luke. And he said, on the ship, remember the ship that was falling apart, and they were near land, and they were going to have to make a swim for it. And he says, therefore, keep up your courage. men, for I believe God that it will turn out exactly as I have been told." So that phrase, keep up your courage, is the same word as James here uses when he says, is anyone among you cheerful? So I find it interesting that these men in Acts 27 find themselves in an intensely harrowing situation.

And it's in this context where Paul uses the word euthymia. And I think that fits with the context in James. It sounds to me like James is telling us that if a believer is encouraged or of courage in the midst of a trial, he is to praise God. So I think we could possibly summarize verse 13 kind of this way, that James is commanding, because it's in the imperative, that when a believer finds himself in a trial, he is to do two things.

He is to pray, asking God for wisdom that he needs, and if that believer is encouraged in the midst of the trial, he is to sing praise. And I think that understanding the verse that way leaves open a bit of an open-ended question. What if he's not encouraged? What if he's not of good courage?

Right? So now we move into verses 14 and 15. Does that help set up the context in your mind? Yeah, great. Yeah, that's wonderful. So let's read verses 14 and 15a. Now, these are the verses that get people all confused. If we were to narrow, just pinpoint the key verses where people really get confused, this is it.

So James says, is anyone among you sick? We're going to deal with that word. Then he must call for the elders of the church, and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up.

Now, you know, many sincere people, in their effort to be biblical, come to these verses thinking that they know what it means, and they attempt to apply it. And frankly, I don't blame them. These verses, the way they've been translated, seem like they should have a very simple, straightforward interpretation. Right? So people take this as what it appears to be. It appears to be a promise of physical healing. And frankly, when they don't get that, they're often crushed. But if we're going to take these verses in a sense of physical healing, then we better read carefully because verse 14 has an imperative command in it.

Now, the NASB that's on the screen is one of the only translations that actually translates that as an imperative. Is anyone of you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church, right? Every single translation that I looked at besides NASB actually put something in there like, let him call or he should call. And frankly, those are terrible renderings of an imperative verb.

So why have they translated it that way? Why is that? And I think, frankly, it's because they know that it doesn't work like this. They know full well that the text has never been proved out to be an absolute promise of healing. So they soften the text. They take what is an imperative mood and they make it sound like it's an option. And the passage kind of gets interpreted this way.

It's almost like, you know, if you're really, really sick and just don't seem to be getting better, then maybe try calling the elders. You know, see if that works. Right? I mean, that's the way I've heard it talked about. I'm not trying to mock, but that's kind of the way it comes across. Amen. Amen.

So it happens that people call in the elders when they have terminal cancer and there's nothing left the doctors can do. And sadly, what's the result? Usually a crushing discouragement, a crushing disappointment. You know, and all because a really poor translation made it seem like a promise of physical healing, and it's not.

I don't believe that it is. Now, don't get me wrong, I do firmly believe that God can and does physically heal people, even today, and sometimes it's miraculous, but I do not believe that this here is a formula for physical healing. Now, if I'm going to say that, I'd really better back that up from the text. I'm not trying to force-fit my theology in here. I've genuinely had to struggle with this passage. I grew up in a denomination that practices this to more or less degree for physical healing. I know people that hold to this interpretation as physical healing. I've had to carefully consider it, but I don't believe that that's what the promise is.

So we want to deal with some of these important words here, and the first one I want to deal with is anointing, because it's less key. We'll deal with it first, and then we'll come back to it when we're sick. But we hear the word anointing, and it colours our thinking, because we usually start thinking about religious ritual. whether that's a Catholic background or a charismatic background, or whether you're just thinking about the Old Testament where kings were anointed and so forth, and it's a ritual. The word here for anointing is alepho. And if you look that up in the Greek dictionary, it just says to anoint. And that's not a lot of help because we still don't really know what we mean by anoint, right?

Although we know it has the idea of to put oil on or smudge oil or so forth. And we could spend a lot more time here, but I'm not going to. However, the use of the word Alepho in the New Testament does give us a little help. And two key passages that we could look at would be Luke 7, verse 46, but we're going to look today at Matthew 6, verses 16 and 17. And in Matthew 6, Jesus refers to anointing with oil as just a common part of personal hygiene.

So, he says there, whenever you fast, do not put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites do, for they neglect their appearance so that they will be noticed by men when they are fasting. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you fast, anoint your heads and wash your face. So, apparently anointing your head is in the same category as washing your face.

That context should help shape our understanding at least a little bit. And we can ask the question, does James have in mind ritual anointing or common hygiene? Now, frankly, it's hard to say based on word meaning alone in this text. Now, you will find there are different words for anointing and that Alepho does tend to be the word that is used for just this mundane kind of hygiene kind of thing. But this doesn't seem to me to be quite enough information to delineate just on how he's used the word, whether this is ritual or or not. But it's important to know that there is at least the potential that James is talking about something other than ritual anointing, just so that our kind of mindset doesn't gravitate towards this ritual ceremony automatically.

Yes, please. You know, a couple of things. One, Jay Vernon McGee really hits the nail on the head saying the anointing is not for healing. And since I'm jumping ahead a bit, but if you go to 15, the prayer of faith will save the sick, right? Absolutely. Yeah.

Excellent point. I know that we're going to leave, frankly, a lot of meat on the bones this morning. So, There's so much more that could be said, and I appreciate that, Bob. Thank you. So, but let's look at the word sick now. So, the word sick is really important to a proper interpretation of this passage. And the word sick in the English appears in both verses 14 and 15 in most English translations. But there's a different Greek word behind each, so we want to look at those. So, and that's maybe a little bit surprising to realize there's two different words and they've just translated as sick in both cases.

You better have a good reason to do that. Let's look at that. So, in verse 14, the Greek word is asteneo and a being the Greek negation and stenos being drank. Now, we looked at that last week. in its connection, and we'll talk about this in a second, to verse 8.

But a straightforward rendering would be just without strength or weak. So you should probably write the words without strength in the margin above the word sick, because that's the most direct literal translation. Now, before we get too excited, maybe, about that and saying, oh look, it doesn't mean sick at all, it is important to understand that the word is often used to mean physical sickness in the New Testament. In the Gospels, for instance, astaneo almost always means physically sick.

So, primarily in Matthew and John, we see it used that way. However, when we get to the epistles, we see that Paul almost never uses astineo for physical sickness. There's only two places where Paul does that. In Philippians 2, 27 and 28, and 2 Timothy 4, 20. But Paul almost always uses astineo in the sense of without strength. And one example is in Romans 14, verse 1.

He says, now accept the one who is weak, that's the word right there, athenaeo, weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinions. So we're left with the question, what is the best translation of athenaeo in this verse? Is it sick or without strength? James hasn't used the word astoneo anywhere else, so we don't know from immediate context how he uses it, but he did use the word, the positive form of the word for strengthen, as we mentioned in verse 8.

Now, if somebody was talking to you and used the word strengthen, and then a few sentences later used the word without strength, I think we would naturally interpret that as having a connection. We talk about, you know, strength in your hearts. But if you're without strength, then I think we would naturally make a connection. So I think it's critical to keep in mind the context of how James has used that word.

Now, we're going to come back to this again at the end. This will be kind of wrap up. Let's look at verse 15, the word sick in verse 15. And the word there is a different word, and it's comno. Now, and this is the participle being weary. And it only appears two other times in the New Testament, and in both cases it clearly refers to growing weary under difficult circumstances.

And you can see there, the two instances, Hebrews 12, 3, and Revelation 2, 3. And in both cases, I found this very interesting, the author talks about enduring. Notice that, for considering him who has endured such hostility, So you will not grow weary, Kamno, in Revelation 23. And you have perseverance and have endured and have not grown weary. So, exactly the same context as what James is talking about. So, unlike the word Asteneo, the word Kamno is never translated as sick.

And so I'd have to say that this is probably a poor translation here. And it would be good to write the word weary above the word sick in verse 15. But in the English, that repetition of the word sick just kind of helps invent the idea that we're talking physical sickness and physical healing. So let's draw these verses all back into the context of James. So we can ask the same sort of question we asked earlier on verse 13. Does it really fit James' major theme to be instructing believers in a formula for physical healing?

And we could ask, genes really write an entire letter about enduring trials with patients and then say, oh, and by the way, if you're sick, here's the way to end that right now. This trial doesn't require endurance. I'll let you answer that question in your own mind. We'll just let that hang there. But I left two points, I mentioned two points that we were going to come back to now.

And the first is that in verse 13 we asked, what does praying for wisdom have to do with being in a trial? And I wanted to leave that until now because I think that what the elders in verse 14 are praying is fundamentally the same thing. only they're praying it for this believer rather than him praying for himself, as in verse 13. But the other point was that we want to think about the imperative command in verse 8, strength in your hearts, and see how that is related to praying for the one who is without strength. Now, I think that what we have here, as I've alluded to and kind of said, is that is that what we have here is a believer who is floundering in the midst of a long-term trial.

He has not strengthened his heart as commanded in verse 8, and now he's without strength to endure. And so instead of being cheerful or courageous, encouraged in the midst of the trial, and counting it all joy, which takes us back to the beginning of this letter, he's finding himself like Job, saying, why me, God? I don't deserve this. And I think that these thoughts can both be answered with this question, or this question leads us into the answer to these two points.

What wisdom are we to pray for that will strengthen our hearts? What wisdom are we to pray for that will strengthen our hearts? And as Christians, as those who are in Christ, isn't the knowledge of the fact of our living union with Jesus Christ what strengthens our hearts? Over and over, Paul tells us what he's praying for fellow believers.

I didn't have as much time to study this out as I would have liked, but there's something that always seems to be at the core of it. The wisdom of the knowledge of Christ. And there's a prime example in Ephesians chapter 1. There it is. Verses 15 through 21. And notice that it is the knowledge of Christ that leads to the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. So Paul is praying for them that they would have the knowledge of Him. And that that is what produces the power or the strength to endure, if we were to apply this to James.

Frankly, I put this prayer on the screen because I think this would be a very appropriate prayer for elders to pray for a believer who finds himself without strength in a trial. You know, you could just take this and look at it and be like, yeah, this is what I can pray for someone who is finding himself weak under trial.

So, yes, right. A parallel passage is Hebrews 12, 3. Consider him who endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest you be wearied and faint in your minds. Isn't that something? It's not the same words, but it's the same thoughts. Yeah. Thanks, Roy. Thank you very much. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Consider him, right? Consider him who endured. It's his life, right?

It's not our strength. We could take that James 5, 8, you know, strength in your hearts as a bootstraps type thing. You know, get ready and be strong in yourself. That's going to be a failure. The strength that we are to strengthen ourselves with is the strength of Christ, and we do that by knowing Him, by focusing our eyes, our attention on Him.

Now, we've really only gone through 13, 14, half of 15, and you'll notice that we say that we're getting down to the end of 18. Boy, Roger, you may want to pick up a little bit and do a little extra. Miles, are you up for teaching next week again? Well, I actually can't teach next week again, but I'm going to give a really quick treatment to those verses. Roger, I don't know if you want to add on any thoughts at the beginning of your lesson next time.

Well, I may do that. Go ahead. What I'm going to do, and I knew this would happen because verse-by-verse treatment, word-by-word, it takes time to go through. And I don't intend to try to cram that in here, but given the context that we've been through, I think that we can give some quick, really quick comments. And I just kind of wrote some bullet point things here that will relate to these last verses. And I said this, if a believer in this situation has sinned, and it's likely, then he will be forgiven in context there.

And that's a 1st John 1.9 type of principle at play, I believe. Miles, just one interjection real quick. I kind of went through this too a little bit and one key part is how many people are involved in this prayer meeting, so to speak? In context, it's not the whole church. It's a person without strength and at least two elders. Maybe more. Exactly. So that's the key part. That's very key, Roger. It really is.

Because I said, you know, in 1 John 1.9, you know, it's confession to God alone.

Here, we see this to one another, but we have to understand contextually who's involved. And why are the elders involved? Well, because frankly, they need to know about this man's state of weakness in order to pray this prayer for him. So he's already confessed to them when he gave them the phone call and explained the situation. You know, this is not what we sometimes think of as a confession session. This is just, hey, I'm struggling with this trial. confession done. Now let's come alongside and let's pray. So that's what I think is being talked about there. And just some closing thoughts.

I should make a quick comment on the effect of prayer of a righteous man. Because verses 17 and 18 is just a historical kind of recital of what happened when Elijah prayed. And notice that he could have picked any number of examples where a prophet prayed for healing. physical healing, and James didn't choose that. James chose an example where Elijah prayed for the earth to produce its fruit, for fruitfulness. And that, I think, is what James is all about, over and over. It's about the fruitful production of endurance. through trials. And I'm just going to say this in closing.

As believers, when we forget the reality of the infinite power of Jesus Christ who lives in us, we need to confess that. We need to confess the fact that we've forgotten that, essentially. And we need to begin to count on it once again. We need to ask God to strengthen us with the knowledge of His Son. That's what will strengthen us. And if we find ourselves unable to regain that confidence in our position, we must call the elders.

They must pray for us. They need to encourage us and get us back on our feet as fellow partakers in the life of Christ. And James says that prayer will accomplish much. That prayer prayed in faith will accomplish much. And I just wanted to add not to despair. If you find yourself in this type of situation, it's very important that we discover our weakness.

It's important to learn that we do not have strength in and of ourselves to endure trials. We do not have the strength. The Lord never intended for a trial to prove out your ability to withstand it, to endure it. That's not what the Lord is trying to accomplish in the life of a Christian.

The purpose is that we learn our own weakness, that we discover our own inability. and we learn, rather, to depend on Him. We could say that we're not looking to escape trials, and we're not even looking to endure trials in our own strength, but we are learning to depend on Christ in the trials, in the midst of trials. hopefully kind of summarizes what we're looking at here.

So I don't know if I gave a fair treatment to those last verses. Roger, I'm sure you can add some really good comments on those things next week. No, you did a great job. No, I think you overall got the main thrust and it's great. It's wonderful. I knew we would need to deal most critically with verses 14 and 15, where most of the hangups are. But I think if we have a proper understanding of those verses, the other ones fit fairly well. I mean, we have to continue to seek the Lord as our teacher in this regard in this text, but I feel quite confident that the way that it fits into the overall text is the way we've looked at it this morning, and so we continue to to learn. Do you know of any translations that use a term rather than sick for those two words? Okay, I didn't. I mean, there's a lot of translations, but the ones I looked at, I believe only one of them differed in verse 15. Yeah,

15. I believe in verse 15, they're almost 100% consistent on sick. And I don't know why.

I mean, it is the alternate translations, like I said, the way we see Paul use it, it is not necessarily specifically physical sickness. That is a common translation, especially in the Gospels. I mean, we see a lot of sickness healed, and that's often the word used there. but it's almost just as common to use it for non-physical weakness. I feel like it's one of those things where the King James translated that way, and everybody hesitated to differ.

Let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what you have revealed to us in your Word. I pray that we would be good, diligent students of the Word, not ever trying to force-fit our own theology. We're so prone to that. But seeking simply what's in the text that you've given to us. and seeking to understand that rightly. And Lord, we thank you for the message that is here in James.

Very, very early in the church's beginning, but already explaining to us the the program that you have in mind for the church, which is primarily one of difficulty and suffering in large part, so that we would learn dependence on Christ. And there really is nothing greater for us than to learn that He is our life, that He is our strength. And we can be encouraged by that in the midst of any trial. any difficulty, no matter how great it is, He is greater still. He is all-powerful, all-wise, and He is all-loving. He doesn't take us through. You do not take us through. anything that you do not intend for our good and ultimately for fruitful production. Lord, we just thank you for that in Jesus' name. Amen.