The Sufferer’s Survival Guide: Part 3 - James Lesson 31

The Sufferer’s Survival Guide – Part 3

James 5:16-18

We are going back to James 5 again today and then for a final time next week. I am going to finish this section from verses 13-18 today. I will be gone next week so Matthew is going to finish this book up for us. He will bring the message on the last two verses in James. Let’s read James 5:16-18.

The section we have been looking at is what I have called “The Sufferer’s Survival Guide.” We need a good understanding of these verses because suffering is our experience in a fallen world. Whether we are suffering because of persecution that is the result of our relationship to Christ, or suffering associated with health problems, or suffering which results from relational conflict, suffering from grief, or anything else, this passage gives us the instructions necessary to not only survive the suffering, but to thrive in our suffering.

Suffering can lead to depths of despair that keep a person from believing there is any hope. Hopelessness and despair are like quicksand. The sufferer sinks lower and lower unless someone comes along to help. Some suffer in misery and despair and withdraw into isolation and suffer not only from the affliction, but also loneliness. Sufferers make the mistake of trying to endure their suffering alone. Some, who claim the name of Christ and start off strong in their walk of faith, end up experiencing a shipwreck in regards to the faith. Very often when this happens there is suffering involved. They fail to understand God’s purpose in their suffering. They question the goodness of God. They doubt the faithfulness of God. Their faith fails. 

On the other hand, there are those who suffer greatly, and their suffering is the very thing that God uses to accomplish His great work of sanctification. Some are like eagles that soar in the turbulence. The suffering lifts them higher and higher. Their faith is not destroyed by the suffering. In fact, their faith is strengthened in the midst of suffering. This was the experience of the Apostle Paul. This can be the experience of every Christian.

The results which come from our experience of suffering depend on our responses to the suffering. This sufferer’s survival guide is a series of instructions on how to respond when suffering is the experience of life. We will suffer. There is no question about that. How we respond to the suffering determines whether we will survive and thrive, or are deeply damaged, or even destroyed.

James told us that our first response was to pray. Verse 13, “Is anyone among you suffering? Then he must pray.” The right response is to pray. The wrong response is to complain, question God, look for an easy way out, or get angry with God for allowing these things to happen to you. God loves you. He may be blessing you with a reminder of your need to spend time on your face before Him. How can that be a bad thing? James tells us that our first response is to pray. You can learn a lot more about this response if you go listen to the sermon from two weeks ago.

The second response is praise. “Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises.” This word speaks of being of good courage and cheerful in the midst of adversity. This only happens when the sufferer has a proper perspective. Who would be cheerful in suffering? The child of God who understands the importance of perspective. The person who understands that God is in complete control of everything going on in life and His design in everything is His glory and honor. I can be cheerful in suffering if I understand that God can and will use my suffering for His glory. In this I can sing praises. More on this was also covered in the message two weeks ago.

The third response is to turn to people, but it must be the right people. “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; and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up…” When you are suffering, you are to respond by praying, praising, and calling the right people to come to your aid. Call the elders of the church. The sufferer is to take the initiative. Make the call.

The fourth response is to embrace the promises. Believe the promises. There is a powerful promise here that the prayer of faith will restore the one who is sick. We learned last week that this refers to spiritual weakness, not any and all physical sickness. In the middle of suffering there is nothing more important than the promises of the word of God to help you through. The promise here is that when your faith is weakened by suffering, if you will call the elders to pray, the elders come along side and minister comfort and encouragement, and you are restored. You are rescued from the path of spiritual shipwreck. The Lord will raise you up. This is a beautiful and powerful promise. 

The third and fourth responses were covered in the message from last week. I would strongly encourage you to listen to any of these messages you may have missed. If you know someone who is suffering, tell them where they can listen.

We are now ready for the next response given in our sufferer’s survival guide. We pray, we praise, we call the right people, we embrace the promises, and we remember our pardon. Look at the emphasis on forgiveness in this passage. Verse 15 ends with, “and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him.” Verse 16 continues, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another so that you may be healed.”

It is easy to understand why this is important. We are constantly tempted to sin, even when we are not suffering. But suffering brings with it its own challenges. Those who are not spiritually mature, and prepared for the challenges, will probably find themselves failing to respond in ways that are only God honoring. We have already touched on many of the sinful responses. Complaining, questioning God’s wisdom, questioning God’s love, getting angry, looking for the easy way out – these are all responses to suffering that are sinful. Yet, they are the most common, even for people who have been walking faithfully for many years. Even common sins are still sins. All sin is offensive to holy God.

The word for “sin” used in verse 15, where it says, “and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven” is the Greek word “hamartia.” A different word is used in verse 16. We will talk about it in a moment. “Hamartia” is a word that describes missing the true end and scope of our lives which is God. Anything that does not conform to God is sin, “hamartia.” Any aberration from truth, any aberration from God’s prescribed law or duty, any expression of rebellion, disbelief, or defection. Anything that misses the mark of perfect compliance to the will and word of God is sin.

Who of us wants to stand up and give a testimony and make the claim that we have endured suffering and did so without sin? If we so much as even have the thought of doubt about God’s love and faithfulness, we have missed the true end and scope of our life, which is God. He desires and deserves from us complete trust, complete obedience, complete devotion to living for His honor and glory. Suffering presents to us some of the greatest challenges. It isn’t always easy to praise. We may find it hard to pray when we are suffering. It is much easier to complain, or question, or doubt, or get angry. But all of these are sinful responses.

This reality makes the promise of pardon so sweet to the child of God. When our suffering renders us weakened and spiritually anemic and we find ourselves with attitudes and actions that are less than God’s desire, we have the promise that He pardons. He forgives. He is a forgiving God. God is gracious and compassionate, and abounding in lovingkindness. He knows our frame and He is mindful that we are but dust. He removes our sin as far as the east is from the west. God pardons.

Verse 16 uses another word for sins. “Therefore, confess your sins to one another…” The KJV translates this “faults.” It is the Greek word “paraptoma” or “paraptoma.” This word means fault, lapse, error, mistake, false step, or blunder. This word seems to indicate sins that are not necessarily sins of outright rebellion, but rather lapses in judgment, or mistakes that were not intentional. Many times, the sins associated with suffering are these kinds of sins. It is in the midst of the pain of our suffering, whether it is physical or emotional pain, that we lapse into the error of self-pity. We make the mistake of doubting or questioning God. We take a false step down the path of anger. 

What happens in the life of the true child of God is that the Holy Spirit will prevail. He will convict of sin, righteousness, and judgment. He will guide you into all the truth. He will bring to mind the promises of God. The Holy Spirit will bring the suffering child of God to the place of repentance. There will be restoration. The Holy Spirit will bring the true child of God to confess. The word literally means “speak the same.” We will call our attitudes and actions what God calls them. They are sinful. We will agree with God. We will bring our lives back in line with the will of God. We will accept God’s dealings with us as just, and perfect, and wise. We will praise Him for the sufficiency of His grace. We will rejoice in His pardon.

Aren’t you thankful for the promise of 1 John 1:9? I know I am. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” The promise of pardon is one of the most comforting and assuring promises in the Bible. It is a promise that every sufferer needs to remember and rejoice in.

What happens if we don’t understand, or we fail to remember the promise of pardon? If we do not respond properly to suffering, suffering can lead us down a dangerous path. Since it is easy to fall into sin, if we do not confess and find spiritual healing through God’s abundant pardon, we can go down a path of destruction. Unconfessed sin leads to further conviction and guilt. Guilt is not a bad thing. Guilt is God’s mechanism for making us aware of the problems of sin. Sin needs to be dealt with in the way that produces pardon. Sin that is not dealt with in a way that produces pardon will ultimately lead to despair.

Despair in the life of a sufferer is a dangerous thing. If you have ever wandered how a Christian who is suffering could get to the point where they would consider taking their own life, this is how that happens. The promise of pardon is the answer to despair and hopelessness. There is hope in the promise of pardon. There is joy in God’s forgiveness.

Don’t overlook the important aspect of the “one another” in this passage. Confess your sins to “one another” and pray for “one another.” Next week Matthew will be teaching verses 19-20 to wrap up this study of James. The emphasis is on the ministry of reconciliation. We are all called to the ministry of reconciliation. We are to go after those who are straying from the truth. Among those straying from the truth are those who are suffering. In their suffering their focus is on self. In their self-focus they begin to sin, even if it is the mistakes and stumbling that are just lapses of faith. They need others in the fellowship to come along side and be there to encourage and exhort. The sufferer needs to confide, confess, and ask for helpful prayer.

If this passage teaches us anything, it teaches us of the importance of being there for one another. The sufferer cannot confess his sins to someone who is not there. The sufferer will not confess his sins to someone he thinks is going to think less of him, or go and blab his failures to everyone who will listen. The sufferer will confess his sins to the one who demonstrates genuine love and concern. He will confess his sins to the one whom he knows will pray.

The promise is that this one will be healed. This is not a promise of healing from all sickness. It is the Greek word “iaomai.” The literal meaning of the word is to cure, restore, and return to bodily health. But as we have already determined, this is healing of spiritual weakness. The word here is used metaphorically of spiritual disease. It really means that we will be healed from the consequences of sin. It is the same word used in 1 Peter 2:24 where Peter says, “and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.” The healing Jesus provided was a spiritual healing through His death on the Cross.

The right response when we sin in suffering is to confess our faults to one another. This produces the promise of pardon. There is another alternative to confession and pardon. It is denial. It involves defending our sinful responses. We can complain, then rationalize and justify our sin by saying that no one understands. These responses put us in the position to forfeit the blessing of pardon.

There is one more resource to understand in this sufferer’s survival guide. We have seen the resources of prayer, praise, people – elders and one another, promises that can be believed, pardon that restores, and finally we find power. The last half of verse 16 tells us that “the effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.” Verse 17-18 give us the example of Elijah, a man of like nature as ours, who prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain for three years and six month. Then he prayed again and the sky poured rain and the earth produced its fruit.

If James had intended for us to understand verses 14-16 as a promise of healing from any and all sickness and disease, then his example of the powerful prayer of Elijah would have included something other than a prayer for rain to stop and rain to fall. This is what Elijah did in response to Israel’s decline into idol worship. God used Elijah to proclaim judgment on the land. Elijah told the wicked king Ahab that it wasn’t going to rain on the land, nor would there be dew except by the word of the prophet.

During this drought God sent Elijah to stay with a widow and her son at Zarephath. Let’s look at this in 1 Kings 17:17-24. This widow’s son became sick, so sick that he died. Elijah took the boy and carried him to the upper room of the house where Elijah was staying. Elijah stretched his body over the dead boy three times and 1 Kings 17:21 says that Elijah, “called to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord my God, I pray You, let this child’s life return to him.” Verse 22 says, “The Lord heard the voice of Elijah, and the life of the child returned to him and he revived.”

If James were intending to illustrate the promise of healing for physical sickness, he had the option of using this prayer and the example of the healing of this child. 1 Kings actually records the words of Elijah as a prayer asking God to restore this child to life. But that is not the point of this example of power in prayer.

In the 1 Kings account of the drought, there is no record of Elijah praying that it would not rain or rain. James fills in some details left out by the author of 1 Kings. 1 Kings also does not tell us that the duration of the drought was three years and six months. James gives us that detail as well. It is correct because it was given under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. 

The point here is that James gives, as an example of the effective prayer of a righteous man, an example of an event in Elijah’s life that resulted in the spiritual restoration of a nation, not physical healing from a sickness or disease. The drought in Israel led to the confrontation between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. Go read that story in 1 Kings. It is fascinating. It ended with the people of Israel falling on their faces and declaring, “The Lord He is God; the Lord He is God.” Elijah told wicked King Ahab to go home and eat and drink because there was the sound of the roar of a heavy shower. It did rain and the productivity returned to the land.

The example of Elijah demonstrates the truth that the effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. Here is what I know to be true. When, in our suffering, we turn our focus on self, and we start having thoughts of self-pity, doubt, fear, and anxiety, we have fallen into sin. The evidence of that sin will be guilt. Guilt is God’s internal mechanism to remind us that we need a different response. Our guilt and conviction should cause us to acknowledge our need for forgiveness. But we are weakened by our suffering, so we need help. We need to call on the elders. We need to turn to one another. We need to confess our faults to one another, and pray for one another. The promise is that we may be healed.

I can guarantee you that if this process is followed, the effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. As assuredly as Elijah prayed that it would not rain and it didn’t, and then he prayed again and it did, with that same assurance we can know that the prayers of those who pray for us when we confess our sins to one another, will bring about a wonderful, powerful, glorious spiritual healing.

I did not say it would bring about an end to the suffering. James does not promise that the suffering will end by the effective prayer of a righteous man. We are going to suffer in this broken, fallen, sinful world. Jesus told us to expect it.

 Suffering can have devastating consequences, even in the life of a child of God. But this doesn’t have to be the end result. Suffering can bring about the most significant spiritual growth that can be experienced in this life. The results depend on the responses of the sufferer. If we respond with prayer and praise, and turn to the right people, trust in the wonderful promises, rejoice in the pardon, we can walk in the power of an amazing strength that God provides.

 As we turn our attention to the Lord’s Table, I want to read from 1 Peter 2:21-25.