James 5:13  Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms.
14  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:
15  And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.

God is a God of order. He demonstrated that in the Creation week and He has been proving that ever since then. In the book of James, God directed James to begin the book with teaching us the importance of praying for wisdom. If we want wisdom, we need to ask in faith, nothing wavering. God warns us that the wavering man will receive nothing from the Lord. We cannot pick and choose what we want to believe from the Bible. Either we believe the Bible or we do not.
Now we come to the closing verses of this book and God once again directed James to write about prayer. Prayer is God’s gift to man. In the Old Testament the altar of incense was there as a visible symbol of the prayers of the people going up to God. The priests were in charge of lighting that altar and the smoke ascending up to heaven was that symbol. Over time, the priesthood became corrupted and God could not receive the prayers of the priests because they were offering them up with blood on their hands. In the book of the Psalms, God stated:

Psalm 66:18  If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me:

The problem for mankind is: what is iniquity? The definitions are almost as many as there are people. God directed the apostle John to take the confusion out of this issue in I John 3:

I John 3:4  Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.

God had already demonstrated this throughout the Bible. Of course there are a multitude of people who believe they have been liberated from the law and they accuse true born again Christians of being legalists. Thus in the human situation, there will never be agreement on what is sin and what is not. Paul stated:

I Corinthians 2:14  But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

The problem is not from God’s side, but from man’s side. It requires true humility to be saved and it requires true humility to be teachable after we are saved. The good news is that after a person is saved, God chastens him when he decides to disobey God. That is not works salvation. That is not legalism. That is the loving Heavenly Father, expecting His child to follow Him. Love is one of the most misunderstood words in the Bible. That is not because God has not defined it well for us. It is that the natural man does not like God’s definition. The natural man still infects the saved person at times. God is there to help the saved person to put to death the influence of the natural man.
In our text saints are encouraged to pray for one another. We must understand that if we want God to hear our prayers in this regard we need to be saved first of all. The lost person can and must call upon God to save him or her. The saved person has access to the throne of grace for all things. As we noted from the Psalms, his prayers will be hindered if he harbours sin in his heart. A saint that wants to defy God in anything is in trouble with God. A true saint may momentarily despise that fact, but if he or she is truly saved they will humble themselves and accept God’s Word as truth.
We know there are thousands of professing Christians walking around today who are frauds. They do not accept God’s Word as the truth. They prove that by adopting one of many perversions. Then they assume they are of the same caliber as the corrupted translators of the perversions, and they are, and they interpret what is written through their corrupted minds. Of course a person can do that with the King James Version as well. There are men like Peter Ruckman who was a fierce defender of the King James Version, but he was a vile man. Amazingly there are many King James Bible defenders who still hold him up high. There is a grave spiritual problem there.
To be afflicted here is to undergo hardships. That would apply to everyone at some point in their life. Again we are talking here of saved people. Lost people also undergo hardships but they do not have the blessing of praying to God about it. They may claim to do that, but God does not hear them. The Bible tells us that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. Even if a lost person prays for rain, he does not get it because he prayed for it. He gets it because God is merciful to all people. A lost person may find comfort because he or she prayed for some affliction and they believe they found relief and they might even credit God wth that relief. The devil is happy to deceive his followers into thinking they are right with God. He wants them to remain separated from God and he does not mind giving them a false sense of hope.
James also wrote of the person who is merry. The merry person is the saved person that is in good spirits. It is a natural response for a saved person to want to sing psalms when things are going well for him. The nation of Israel broke into singing occasionally when God delivered them from trouble. They complained to Moses when they were at the Red Sea and Pharaoh and his armies were storming up behind them. When God opened the waters and they walked through on dry ground safely and then God closed those waters up again and Pharaoh’s army drowned in those waters, they sang a song of praise to God. They were very fickle.
Paul and Silas sang praises to God while they were in stocks in prison in Philippi. They were afflicted. They were hurting. However, they also had the joy of the Lord in their hearts. They prayed for strength and they demonstrated the answer to that prayer in singing praise to God. The Lord was pleased with their faith and He shook that prison so fiercely that the gates were opened and all the prisoners were loosed. The jailor wanted to kill himself, but Paul cried out that he not do so. The jailor knew exactly what he needed to do at that time. He knew it before, but he rejected his need. Now, when he was spared from certain death, he knew he needed spiritual life. He needed to be set free from the death he was living under.
In verse 14 of our text, the challenge is to the sick saint. Interestingly, the Charismatic crowd claims that a Christian should not be sick. I wonder why God wasted His Words to put these words in here then? The Bible gives examples of true saints who were sick. Sometimes they were so sick that they could not even get around. God did not always heal the sick saint then, nor does He now. God can still heal and He still does heal at times.
God shows us the importance of the local church here. You cannot call the elders of the church if you are not a part of a true church. There is no universal body of elders. You notice here as well that it is the sick person who is to call for the elders to come. The sick person needs to be a saved person who is acting upon faith in God.
The elders, according to the Bible are pastors. The church referred to here would have been large enough to have more than one pastor/elder. The elders were godly men who walked in the fear of the Lord. They were to be called upon to pray over the sick person. They were also to anoint the sick person with oil in the name of the Lord.
The oil referred to here would have been olive oil. They did not have “baby oil” or the many types of oil we have today. There was no medicinal value in the oil. In the Bible, anointing with oil was a symbol of the Holy Spirit. After the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ, the saved received the Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation. The apostles had a unique privilege in Acts 2. That has never been repeated since then, in spite of the lies of the Charismatics. They can make any claim they want and they can give any “proof” they want but it is all fraudulent.
The sick person in our text would have been a saved person, and thus would have already had the Holy Spirit dwelling in them. It is possible that the anointing with the oil was simply a reminder of the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit in this person’s life.
Verse 15 is important in the context of this subject. Thus far we have noted the importance of the faith of the sick saint in calling for the elders to come pray over him or her. We have also noted the faith of the elders in coming to pray over the sick person. This is obviously not a secret meeting. Thus others would be well aware this was taking place. God promised here to raise up the sick person and if the sick person had committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. God uses sickness at times to chasten His child. He uses sickness at times to teach His child the importance of drawing closer to Him. We do not know all the ways of God, but we do know that we have this avenue given to us to help us with our infirmities.
As we have already mentioned God is not obligated that He must heal every sick saint. If that were so, then we would have a problem. In Philippians 2 we read of a man named Epaphroditus, who was sick, nigh unto death. The text tells us that this man was a man of faith. He helped out where the other saints were failing to do their duty. Yet it was he that was sick nigh unto death. He had overworked himself to supply the needs of the apostle.
God can and still does heal today. We have been given this passage to help us to address the issue of human frailty. It is important that we not demand things of God. We are taught here that God heals through the true local church. There is not such a thing as a “faith healer” who travels around holding special healing meetings. There is also no Biblical authority for a person to hold a private communion service for healing. Those who do things outside of God’s written will and still claim to be healed, are being deceived by the devil. That is never a good thing.
Those who are saved have all the instruction we need to know how to live the Christian life. We do not need to be confused or uncertain. We need to walk by faith and believe what God has given to us. If there is something we do not understand, we need to pray and seek godly counsel from other God-fearing men who can help us to understand God’s Word. A God-fearing man is one who walks in the fear of the Lord. He does not make up his own standard of righteousness. He does not re-write Scripture.
No one wants to be sick. Let us follow God’s Word in all things. Be sure you are saved. Be sure you are humbly submitted to Him by joining a true local church where you can be fed and can grow properly. Serve the Lord humbly and look for that church where iron sharpens iron. You will be blessed in doing that.
Pastor Bartel