One Another

 

Text: James 5:13-20

Focus: Encouragement

Function: to help people see how we can encourage each other

¹³Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. ¹⁴Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. ¹⁵The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. ¹⁶Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. ¹⁷Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. ¹⁸Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest.

¹⁹My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, ²⁰you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

I believe that I inherited a gift from my father. He died young, at 67 and he was a preacher of grace. My dad exemplified what it says in the verse, is anyone cheerful, they should sing songs of praise. My dad always had a song of praise in his heart.

And I was raised in an hell fire and brimstone denomination. Every Sunday, it seemed as if I needed to go to the altar when someone other than my dad was preaching because I was convinced that all of my sin must mean that I truly did not yet believe. I was filled with shame from most of the preachers I heard. Except my dad. My dad, when he preached, preached the joy of serving Jesus, the love of God and the power of redemption. Dad cut his preaching teeth preaching the rescue missions and places where the down and out went because he knew that those were the kind of people that Jesus was most attracted to.

I had a dear head deacon once, who loved to discuss theology. One day, he said to me, that he believed that the primary mission of the church was to exhort each other and hold each other accountable.

I chewed on that for a few days as I pondered what he was asking me to do as a preacher.

To exhort and to hold one another accountable seemed like a noble cause to me, because in so doing, we keep the faith pure and we keep ourselves from worldly distractions. I believe in that. But the problem with the mindset is that we then have to sit back and judge ourselves and others by ours and their actions and it leaves, it seems to me that it leaves, room for us to judge and criticize one another.

The next time we were in discussion, I said to him that I thought it might serve my ministry better, and the mission of the church better if we changed those words slightly to reflect a more Spirit-led mindset. Why not say, instead of exhorting -which means to preach at, and holding accountable, which literally means to judge each other’s actions as if we could know the intentions of the heart.

The change I suggested was that we instead say that the mission of the church in regard to its members is to encourage and enable them for ministry.

I take my example from the way Jesus sent the apostles out early to do ministry work; He entrusted them while they were still babes in Christ because it is the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us that makes this faith of ours work out its practices in our lives.

To enable and to encourage is what this passage is about.

No doubt, we Brethren have seen this passage played out in ministry settings many times as we have observed an anointing service.

We have heard the scripture read, but during that powerful ordinance, during its liturgy, we don’t get a description of what it means.

The word for “Sick” in the phrase, “Is there any sick among you” is anemia. It translates directly into the English just as well to say, are any of you spiritually weak, or anemic?

Admit it and call for the elders of the church to pray over you.

It isn’t just for physical healing. More than anything, it is for encouragement and enabling so that we can continue to do the work that Jesus has called us to do for Him.

In this charge to enable and encourage each other through the power of the Holy Spirit, is the principle that we act in faith.

And I love the fact that James knows that at times our faith seems to be weak, or we seem to not know how or what to pray for. He reminds us that Elijah, the great prophet of God who worked miracle after miracle was not anything special. He was human, just like us.

He is not telling us that we are all just as powerful as Elijah was, but he is telling us that if we are people who are passionate about justice, God will answer our prayers. He did it for Elijah even to the point of causing a drought in the land for three years.

How did Elijah know to pray for it?

Remember last week we looked at James where he tells us that sometimes we pray with the wrong motive, we pray for our own needs and desires instead of the things that God has called us to in serving His family, the Kingdom of God, as it is here to bless the earth.

We are here with a mission, to continue the blessing of Christ Jesus to a world that is tainted by sin, evil and corruption. We are called to rise above it and to love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves and not pick up on the dangerous and sinful political rhetoric of the world that we live in.

We are a blessing. God has called us to be the blessing. Elijah was in a desperate situation and he was full of the Spirit and God lead him to that prayer so that the people would see that God alone is God and to be worshiped.

And finally we conclude with another part of what it means to be an enabler. Some people do wander from the truth. I mentioned the deacon who was wrestling with forgiveness after 9/11, at least she was honest about her struggles. And that is part of what happens. We confess our doubts, insecurities and weaknesses to one another and one another brings one another back with love and encouragement.

I suppose it is the last part of this passage where my other deacon got the idea the the job of the church in regard to believers was to exhort and to hold accountable.

It is true, some people stray. Paul brings up the same idea in Galatians 6:”¹Brothers and sisters, even if a person is caught in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual are to restore such a person in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, so that you are not tempted as well.”

I see a qualifier about who gets to do this. Those who are spiritual are called to intervene. What does it mean to be spiritual? Well, that is anyone’s guess. But it suggests that we be careful with ourselves. Remember Jesus’ parable about the log in our eye and the mote in our brother’s eye. Jesus told us to look at ourselves. I don’t love the sinner and hate the sin. I love the sinner and hate MY OWN sin.

And the keyword in the passage is to restore. So often, I have seen people who have confronted the sin in others thinking they were being spiritual but their goal was not to restore, but to prove themselves to be right. James warns us about jealousy and selfish ambition.

Restoration means an holistic approach. It is between them and God and between them and others. If it doesn’t include both, then it falls short of restoration. It isn’t punishment, but grace.

And it comes from the fact that God loves the one we are working with as much as God loves us.

Hopefully, the power of the Spirit working through the love of God will keep us in the right mindset to encourage and enable each others.

Which Wisdom?

 

Text: James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a

Focus: Wisdom

Function: showing divine wisdom

James 3:13-4:3

Two Kinds of Wisdom

¹³Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. ¹⁴But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. ¹⁵Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. ¹⁶For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. ¹⁷But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. ¹⁸And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.

Friendship with the World

4:¹Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? ²You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. ³You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.

⁷Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

Today we are looking at Godly wisdom versus the wisdom that the world has to offer us.

Our wisdom, I mean, the one we possess through the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us is different from the wisdom that the world has to offer. And, according to James, it is going to be shown in our lives by the fruit or actions that are prevalent, or obvious, in our lives.

I can think of one of my favorite saints, she was a faithful Christian and to me, she represented everything that it meant for us to be Church of the Brethren in the way she loved and cared for others. It isn’t fair to mention her name, but I am sure Kathy knows who I mean when I say that she was always had the right kind of word to say at the ladies gossip table, I mean, the ladies quilting table. We had one dear believer who was one of the hardest working saints in the church who was a real blessing to us, but she had this problem with gossip. And this other saint, the one I am referring to would always speak a nice and kind word about the person who was being attacked in gossip.

She was careful not to engage in that behavior, even though it was modeled to her by other believers because she knew that God loved the person they were talking about.

I use her and gossip because James talks a lot about controlling the tongue and as we saw last week, not one of us is perfect at it, but we try because we believe in our heavenly reward and we don’t want our lack of love and forgiveness to get in the way of our eternal salvation.

Perhaps that is what he is speaking of when he is speaking of the heavenly wisdom producing this kind of fruit in our lives.

We are forgiven by God even though we did not earn it by our works. It is an act of grace, a divine act of Love, from God to us to forgive us of our sins before we even ask it of God.

God is love and therefore, when we act in love, we are acting Godly. We are using God’s wisdom.

I contrast earthy wisdom with Godly wisdom in the whole idea of taking revenge. The Bible says: “Revenge is mine, I will repay.” and it also commands us not to repay evil with evil but to repay evil with blessings, even going as far as giving our enemy a cup of cold water.

It is God’s wisdom at work and it is demonstrated not by our wrath, but by God’s love for people shown through us.

The world tells us to take revenge and to get even. God tells us to forgive and to love our enemies. And we know this, our eternal souls are at stake with the way that we forgive our enemies. So, the wisdom from above constrains our actions and gives to us the power to forgive in the face of evil.

Forgiveness sets us free and it also places us in a position where God indeed may just decide to act in love for us and vindicate us. If not here on earth, then we as believers know that God will reward us in heaven for loving without condition, even our enemies.

Chapter four then segues into what my translators call “Friendship with the world.”

It is like he is reminding us that our reward is in heaven and not on earth. He talks about prayer, our prayer life, and whether or not our prayers get answered. He warns us not to pray for selfish desires but for, well he doesn’t say what we are to pray for, I assume that we take it from the Lord’s prayer, especially the line in the prayer: “Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

I have seen some tremendous answers to prayer and I have had some incredible disappointments in my prayers. I think I am beginning to see the reason for the difference. Jesus commanded us to seek first His Kingdom and His peace and then all the necessities of life will be given to us. We don’t always understand the mysteries of God’s Kingdom and what God is doing.

His warning to us is to place us in a position where we are praying for Kingdom things instead of the things that we need. He describes it as a war, at times, within us, a war of submitting to God’s will over our own.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t pray. He says, you have not because you ask not.

It seemed to me that the healing of my sister in law was a necessary thing for my and Kathy’s peace. We were not ready to let her go so young, but we don’t see things from God’s perspective.

I find that living by faith is important at times like this. We trust God’s sovereignty and we experience God’s grace.

My favorite bible verse is the shortest: “Jesus wept.” Jesus, who had the power of life and death in His fingertips grieved with Mary and Martha at their loss. God grieves with us in our losses and comforts us with God’s own empathy in our lives. God’s kingdom stretches to heaven and we are still connected, by faith, to those who have gone to heaven before us.

And when I think of what it means then, to possess this godly wisdom and to live this peaceable kind of life, I realize that we are living lives whereby we rest, or bask, in the love of God.

So the action goes along with the way I introduce the Lord’s prayer every week, “Lord, we submit to you praying as you taught us to pray…”

And finally, our text tells us, “therefore,” we must submit to God. Resist the incarnation of evil and it will leave us, and constantly draw near to God.

How do we draw near to God?

By reading God’s word, praying, worshiping together and living the life of a believer.

And remember the promise, seek first God’s kingdom and God’s peace and what we need will be given to us. We, as believers, can rest in God.

No One is Perfect

 

Text: James 3:1-12

Focus: The tongue

Function: to help people see that people are not perfect and we should look to Jesus

3:¹Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. ²For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. ³If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. ⁴Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. ⁵So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits.

How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! ⁶And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. ⁷For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, ⁸but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. ⁹With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. ¹⁰From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. ¹¹Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? ¹²Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.

The Tongue. Controlling the tongue is the subject for today’s lesson.

Reading this passage almost always leads me to regret. And for a person like me, regret can be bad because regret can lead to shame and shame is always of the Devil since it is contrary to the grace that is offered us freely through the blood of Jesus.

The problem with harmful words, most often said in anger and are almost always an exaggeration of the truth because they are said in anger, the problem, as I was saying, is that once they have left our lips they can never be taken back. And the harm that they cause can last a lifetime. Regret is the word that comes to mind when I think of the words that I have spoken that should have never left my lips.

Verse 8, then, is comforting. BUT, he says. BUT no one can tame the tongue, it is a restless evil full of deadly poison. More on that later, perhaps.

And he decries insincerity in worship. He points out the hypocrisy of saying that we love God and then at the same time saying that we hate others.

A few weeks ago we spoke of spiritual warfare and the protection that we have in God. God has called us to some sort of offensive work in the nature of spiritual warfare. He said that we do not fight flesh and blood, but we fight spiritual forces in heavenly places.

Our battles are against the influences of society that keep people in bondage. One of the influences in society that I think plagues us the most and we see it uprising with the increase in domestic terrorism with the rise of white supremacy is racism. I believe that the spirit of racism is demonic and it is something that we should be praying against and fighting.

I have spent a lot of time on short term missionary trips. I have spent a lot of time in Mexico and have gotten to know the people. They are loving, sincere, family people who care for their own just like we do. Many of them are in desperate poverty and we feel it is our Christian duty to go overseas or across borders to help the poor. But racism has raised its ugly head and the same Christians who donate money, go and serve, are also the ones who parrot the words that Mexicans are rapists and murderers and shouldn’t be allowed in decent society. It is a lie. And James says that if we are Christians we are not going to say that we love God and our neighbor and then call refugees by the name Illegal. Name calling merely justifies the lack of the loving response to their plight that Jesus calls us to.

James says it is the name calling, using the “N” word or any other derogatory word toward a group of people is a sin and a great hypocrisy.

If we bless God with our mouths then we need to bless others with the same mouth.

And, verse 8 tells us that it is hard and nearly impossible.

Kathy and I like NYC. We visited while ground zero while they were still cleaning up and we wept. What amazed me was how friendly and caring people were. Everyone was quick to say “God bless you” after a sneeze.

Today we include in the message a remembrance to what happened 20 years ago today. The towers had fallen and America was brought to its knees in prayer and shock. And on 9/12, we did not care if someone was white or black, Democratic or Republican, we just cared that we were all in this together and the idea of unity filled us.

As it happened, I had major surgery on 9/11 and was three weeks out of the pulpit recovering. So, a month later, after the shock had worn off, we were in prayer meeting and I was praying for peace, the kind of peace that would last through a terrible thing like this. And in that prayer, in obedience to Christ, I prayed that God would help us to love and forgive our enemies. 

Some people in the room rejected that idea of forgiveness because it is hard in situations like this. But it is commanded. Jesus forgave the men who murdered Him while they were gambling for His clothes. Talk about loving forgiveness.

But He was Jesus and we are not. He has an heavenly perspective, even into the spiritual forces at work against nations and He can see and understand the where and why and how of every situation. We cannot. If we had His perspective, we might be able to forgive better.

But that does not let us off the hook for forgiveness. That just takes it to the realm of trust that God is in control of humanity and will always be the loving and fair judge at the end of the ages.

That does not let us off the hook for what happens with the effect of our tongues.

He tells us that none of us is perfect. If we were, we would not need grace.

Many theologians would say that if it was possible for us to be perfect, then Jesus would not have had to come and die on the cross for our sins. It was our sin that lead Him to the cross and according to those same theologians, it was God’s plan from the beginning that we fail in the garden just so that He could become the Savior of humanity.

I am not sure I buy that, a lot of suffering has happened for it to just be an ego trip for God.

God is not like us. I don’t believe that God has an ego that needs to be satisfied. God, God says, is love.

And love understands the human condition as imperfect and gives it grace.

So, instead of feeling shame when I read this passage, I now feel grace because I know that only Jesus was perfect and that gives me something to do. I can now strive to be like Him.

Don’t bog yourself down with regret at misspoken words when reading this passage. It is a call to be like Jesus even though, only Jesus was perfect. Forgive yourself for mistakes because God has already done forgiven you.