True Religion: Embracing Community

James 5: 13 - 20

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SPEAKER_01 0:19

Would you now stand for the reading of God's Word? Our passage is James chapter 5, beginning of verse 13. We'd like for everybody to be able to see the passage as it's being preached. James chapter 5, beginning at verse 13, page 1078, and you read pew Bibles.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well. The Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other, so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. My brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, remember this: whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins. The word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Thanks be to God. Thank you, LG. Would you pray with me once more as we come to God's word? Let's pray together. Father, we come now to your word, having sung our praises to you, offered up our hearts in prayer to you, brought our offerings to you, heard the reading of your word, Lord. We now come to give our attention and our hearts to the preaching of your word, that by the power and moving of your Holy Spirit changes us. And we need that this morning. We need to see Jesus. So would you come and speak to us through your word and prepare us to come and meet you at your table? In Christ's name we pray. Amen. So a question for our young people to get us started here. Are there people in your life that have say over you? In other words, they can tell you what to do and you have to answer to them. Who are some of those? Got any of those you can think of in your life? Your dad, okay. Cash says his dad. Gotta answer to him. And your mom, you better get that one in too. Yes. That's good. Thank you, Cash. Who else? People, who are people in your life? You you gotta answer to them. They have say in your life. Think of any others. Maybe at school. What's that? Okay. All right, good. Teachers, right? Coach. You know, if you think about it, there's so many areas of life where there's people they have say over you. And that's not too fun, is it? I know whenever I was a kid, I just kind of had this idea. I'm like, man, I cannot wait till I grow up because I'm going to be able to call my own shots. I can do whatever I want. I'll finally have freedom, right? I can stay up as long as I want. I can eat whatever I want to, you know, I can do whatever I want to do. And then you become an adult and you're like, it's worse. Right? We are accountable. There's people who have say over us in our life. You know, there's something deep inside of us that wants to do what we want to do. It's this deep desire to be autonomous over our life, for no one to have say over us and sway over us and control over us. We want to be free. And we imagine freedom to be this state of being able to do whatever I want to do, right? It's kind of ingrained in our culture. We're Americans, right? It's all about no one will have say over me. You know, it's our cultural motto, especially in Dade County. I mean, you you see the mural on the way over here, right? God, guns, guts, keep us free, right? Because of my gun and my guts, ain't nobody got a say over my life, right? And we imagine that to be freedom. But a part of the problem is we are also ruled by our sinful nature. You know, in the church, uh, when we come to faith, especially in our culture, we tend to bring this deep desire for autonomy and to be able to do whatever we want to do. We bring it into our Christianity and we imagine that Christianity in our faith is just this personalized thing, right? It's just between me and God. And so church becomes something that I go to to get something, like a consumer. I come in order to get fed, I come in order to be uplifted, I come in order to get some energy to be able to go into the week for. But but the idea of a church being a community that I belong to that has say over my life and where there is authority and where people are going to meddle in my life, and where I'm required and called to meddle in their life, that kind of idea about church. Well, it's not so appealing because we don't want people to have sway in our life. We we don't want people to have claim on us. And so we'll often hear in our culture, you know, I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious. You know, I'm I'm I'm all about Jesus, but I don't want anything to do with his church. And that that sentiment makes sense to us, right? Because we don't want the messiness of relationships in the body of Christ. Here's what we're gonna see in our passage as we're closing out the book of James. That we're gonna see that the grace of the gospel calls us into community. The grace of the gospel calls us into belonging and accountability and connection and care for one another. That's what we'll see in our passage. So we're jumping in here, we're finishing the book of James, uh, our summer series here. And as we come to this last section here, it's not hard to see that a prominent theme of this passage is prayer. I mean, if you just look at the verses here, verse after verse, it's prayer. Verse 13, is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Again, he's kind of melding those together. We're in praise, we're we're offering up our hearts to the Lord in prayer. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray. Then he goes on to talk about Elijah. And you see, this theme throughout the passage is about prayer. As James is bringing his book to a conclusion, he wants to come back to the centrality of prayer in the Christian life. He's mentioned that a number of times in the book, but as he comes to the close here, he wants us to root it, to root us in this. And we've called this series true religion, because a part of what James is wanting to do with this book is to help us understand what is authentic Christianity? What does it look like when it's lived out? Right? What is the real thing versus a counterfeit? And what he brings us to here is that a real faith is one that is marked by prayer. Prayer is prominent in the Christian life. Why is that? Well, prayer uniquely, as we think of all the things that we're called to in as followers of Jesus, we think about all the disciplines that we're called to of devotion in our life and all of the things that we can do for God in our life. Prayer is uniquely being with God. It's relational. It's going face to face. You know, all the other things can be a doing for God. You know, I'm performing a duty for Him, but in prayer, it's really at its heart, it's going face to face. It's relational. Prayer is simply just to whittle it down to the very core, prayer is taking your dependence directly to God. So prayer is really like a spiritual barometer for your faith. In other words, if you really want to know what's the depth of my faith, you know, how mature am I in Christianity? How formed am I in Jesus? Really, what we ought to look to is our prayer life. What does my prayer life look like? Both in private and with other people, and it's it's almost like an indicator of how much have I grown. Let's look at our prayer life because it is so central, and that's why James is calling them back here. But you know, probably nothing convicts us more in the world than to look at our prayer life, to see how very prayerless our life is. And why is that? Why is it so hard to pray? Maybe you're like me that I can sit down to pray, I can set aside a time to be with God, spend time with him in prayer. And it is amazing, all of the things that seem to crowd that out. You know, I've shared before, I can sit down, okay, I'm just gonna spend some time with God. I'm here gonna pray, and I'm like, look at those windows. Those need washing over there, right? I need to tend to this over here. Oh, I got a text over here. Like, it's amazing how many things can lure us away from prayer. Now, why is that? Why uh do our lives tend to be so lacking in prayer? And I think at the core it's two things. One, it's it's it's independence, pride, this this deep-seated belief that like I can handle life on my own. We wouldn't probably say that out loud, but if you look at our life and our lack of prayer, we tend to deep down believe I can handle this, I can figure it out, I can handle the burdens in my life and the provision in my life and the troubles that have come into my life. I can figure this out in some way so we don't pray. But then also it's unbelief. It's unbelief. It's not believing. Wait a minute. Prayer has power because I am in prayer going to the one who governs everything, the one who is feeding the birds, the one who is sovereignly in control of every detail of my life. And he's called me to pray. And oh, yeah, he's my father. And in prayer, I'm gonna go to him because he can do something about it. It's unbelief that God is really present in my life, as he so clearly says he is, that he is active, he is not distant, he he is sovereignly working every detail of my life, we're told in scripture. And that that he is almighty. If I'm believing those things, guess what? Prayer just becomes natural. Look at what he calls us to in verse 16. He reminds us of this. Uh, second part of verse 16 the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. See, James wants us to see, don't you understand how powerful a prayer is? So, what James wants us to see. I I see a little evidence here this morning. I don't know if you got to see, Carrie Dupree is sitting back here in the corner. Isn't that wonderful? So, those of you who've been around for a while know that Carrie went in for a routine procedure and things happened in her body, and it was dire. It was very dire, and the doctors were compelling that very honestly. And so, what did we do? We got on the horn, like, get on your knees. Everybody was praying constantly in this church. We came together in prayer, constant prayer. Even though the doctors were like, this doesn't look good, doesn't look like this is gonna end well. And we prayed, and what happened? God heard and answered. I'm looking at a miracle. She's sitting right there. That should not surprise us. See what James is saying? There's power here. He's not beating you over the head like you're not good at some discipline in your life. He's like, there's power. Don't you see this? So James wants to root us in prayer as he's closing his book. But a little bit of a closer look to the passage, see that this is not only about prayer, this final passage. That really, I think the heart of this final passage and what he wants to close with is community. You know, James has gone through in this book, and he's, you know, he's pretty straightforward and he doesn't pull punches, and he really calls it like he sees it, and he's he's called out uh the people that he's writing to, and he's called us out through them, right? He's talked about their double-mindedness, you know, this ability to have God and the world in your life, to serve two masters, right? This spiritual adultery and this propensity to be religious on one day and then worldly on another, right? Can you save the Bible belt? There's a huge difference between Sunday and Monday, right? I'm one person on Sunday, I'm another day on Monday. And James is writing and saying, that's a problem. That is a problem in your life. To be someone who's praising God on Sunday and then on Monday is cursing a neighbor. James says, there's a disconnect there that you don't understand. That is a big problem. You should be really concerned about that. You know, if if you consider yourself religious and yet your heart doesn't go out to the weak and the vulnerable and the poor in action, James says, that's that should concern you right there. So he's he's calling out this thing that is like an epidemic in the Bible belt. That is to claim Christianity and yet not live it. And he's calling that out. Now he comes here to the end of the book, and what does he want to root us in? And it is community that we need to belong to the body of Christ, committed, accountable, welcoming people into our life, us getting involved in others' lives, caring, creating a safe community. Those are the things that he's calling us into. Let's see where he says this. Look at verse 14. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well. James is not just saying, hey, if you're ill, you should pray about that. He's certainly saying that. But he's saying, take it to the body, take it to the church. Don't be someone that's just like, hey, I got all these struggles and troubles in my life, and I'm just gonna deal with them myself. Sometimes that feels humble to us. That is not humility, it is pride, it is independence. But he's saying, if you're ill, go to the church. That we should be a community that's taking our needs and our troubles and our struggles and our sickness to each other in prayer, that we would bring that to the ordained leaders of the church where they can anoint us with oil and pray for healing. We do this. We don't probably don't talk about this enough so that you know that it's available. But we do this. It is available for anyone who is sick and who is suffering in any way, that we will meet with you after the service. Usually go into my office here. We anoint you with oil, and oil, uh, the anointing of oil is symbolic of the Holy Spirit and the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, and we lay our hands on you and we pray for you. And we have seen people healed. So that is an open invitation to anyone here, right? According to God's word, right here. But you see what he's saying here is that we need the body that there is power, not just in prayer, there's power in your individual prayer, but there is a unique power in corporate prayer. You see that? That when we gather together in prayer, there is something that deeply touches and moves the heart of God. And that's what he wants us to see. Don't be individual, be a part of the body. Go to one another. And then he says this in verse 16, probably the most bizarre to us out of the whole section here. Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. Confess your sins to each other. Now, I think we'd just about rather do anything than that, right? Some of us might hear that and say, I've confessed my sins to God. I don't need to confess it to another person, but I would say this: if you can confess your sin to God, but you can't confess it to another person, a brother or sister in Christ, trusted. They should be trusted, they should be wise. You don't just go telling everybody. But if you will not share it with a trusted brother or sister in Christ, we should really question have I really confessed it to God? Because you see, here's how the body works: God becomes present to us through the body of Christ. It's hard for us to see because we're we're so individualistic in the West and we tend to see Christianity in that way. But the Bible, the Bible is so corporate that we are called to be a community of people that are confessing our sins to each other. What that means is this has got to be a safe community, it's got to be a grace-centered community, right? Some of you have might had it have had an experience in the church or with other believers, and you did this and you got roasted, right? That is sinful. That should be dealt with by the church. Gossip should be dealt with directly by the church, right? But it's a call for us to create a community that is safe, like deeply safe. Like you can tell me anything, and I'm gonna guard that. I'm gonna guard your dignity, I'm gonna walk with you. I'm gonna speak grace over you in the name of Jesus, right? Because you see the power of that. The presence and the grace and the forgiveness of God becomes tangible through the body of Christ. That's what James is calling us to here. Now, one interesting thing, I don't know if you notice this in the passage, but he's connecting forgiveness and healing together here. Did you notice that? Again, he says, Is anyone among you sick? You know, come call the elders, be anointed of the Lord. And then he says, if they, this second part of verse 15, if they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. He weaves them together. Do you see that? That is bizarre to us, right? But not to the biblical world. Um, he is not saying that all sickness is a result of sin. You know, that that was a part of the disciples once when they were with Jesus, they made that mistake. They see a crippled man and they said, Hey, who sinned? Him or his parents? Because we know that that only happens because somebody sinned. And Jesus says, Neither. But this is for the glory of God that it might be revealed. Jesus is trying to say, hey, you got way too simple simplistic of an idea. There are many reasons that God brings such suffering and sickness into our life. But sometimes in Scripture, we see the connection. It's God's discipline that's brought into our life, the discipline that he brings into our life to drive us to him. One, for instance, is 1 Corinthians 11. Paul is writing to the church in Corinth. They are a mess, and their uh their observance of communion, of the Lord's table, was messed up because what they were doing was sinning against one another at communion, like shaming one another at communion. And Paul's calling them out, and he's saying, that's why some of you are sick, and that's why some of you are weak, and it's why some of you have fallen asleep. Paul's way of saying, dead. Like that's why, what yes, discipline that God brings. So it's important to see from the passage, sometimes our sickness might be connected to our sin. So when we have the opportunity for healing, it also ought to be also an opportunity to confess our sins to the Lord. And again, God's purpose in that is to drive us to repentance and to drive us to Him. And then finally, we see in verse 19 that we're called into this mutual care of one another that pursues one another when we're struggling. This is where he ends. Verse 19. My brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, remember this: whoever turns a sinner from the air of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sin. What is he calling us to? To a pursuit and accountability and a care for one another. You know, it's so easy to see when you're when you're in a body, or even this can happen with people in your own family or friendships, and you see somebody starts to struggle, they start to drift away, they start to get caught up in something that's leading them away from the Lord. And there could be a strong urge in us to say, Oh, I shouldn't get involved. It's none of my business. That's a big deal here in the South. It's none of my business. Well, James is saying, it is your business because you love them, because you're called to love them, and you are called to make it your business. But I'm not talking about coming in and meddling each other's lives. There's a way to meddle. There's other scriptures that are like, don't meddle, right? But this is talking about what do I do when somebody's struggling? Do I look the other way? Do I pray for them? You should do that. But do you get involved? Do we pursue? Are we committed to one another in that way? You see, what James is trying to help us to see is that we need the ministry of the body of Christ in our life. We're called to it. You know, in light of all of these struggles that James has been calling out, what do we need? We need one another. We need to be able to speak the truth in love to one another. What a balance that is. You know, truth is hard to hear. And so sometimes we know we need to say something to somebody, but we're like, I don't know how they're going to take it. So I'm not going to say anything. There's a risk in that, right? But we need truth. Why? Because we can't see ourselves accurately. We need people close enough in our life that can see things we can't see, and who can come to us in love. That is with gentleness and humility. Hey, I don't, I'm seeing this in your life and I'm concerned about it. Can we talk about it? Right? That's what James is calling us to. He's saying what we need, what we need in true religion, authentic Christianity, is a full immersion in the body of Christ. It's what we're called to be. It's what the church is. And we say it all the time, right? The church is not a building, it's not a service. You didn't go to church this morning. You came together as the church this morning. We are the church. You can burn this building down, don't matter. Does not change the church, the real church, one single bit. Because we are called to be the body of Christ. In one another's life, committed to each other, mutually accountable, speaking the truth in love, safe. You tell me anything, I'm not going to turn my back on you. I'm going to get with you in the mess. I'm going to speak forgiveness over you. So I think the question is, how are we doing? How are we doing with this? You know, I was so, I was so encouraged this week. Um, it was on Monday, we have a little staff meeting on Monday, and I heard that, you know, last Sunday, James had a really convicting passage, right, for all of us about our love of wealth and the danger of riches and all that stuff. And there was a family in the church, and they were they were pretty rocked by James's words. And they get home after church and they're like, we got to talk about this. And so they called up about four or five other people in the church that they knew in relationship with, and they said, Hey, you want to come over for dinner tonight? We need to talk about this. And they got together, they had dinner, and they sat around and they talked about the sermon passage. They talked about what God was saying through James. And I heard that and I wanted to like throw a party because I didn't schedule that. The church didn't organize that. What was happening? The church was just being the church. Right? I'm like, whoa, look at what God just did there. You see, how are we doing with this? How are you doing with it? Do you have anybody in your life that you confess your sins to? Because you you need that. Do you do you are are there ways in which you are getting involved in the body of Christ? Are you belonging? I give you some real practical steps. One, join this church as a member. It is a huge formal step to say, I'm not a Lone Ranger Christian. I'm putting myself in this body and under God's authority through the ordained authority of the church. I'm choosing that because I believe that's what God's saying. That could be a huge step. Membership process starts this fall. We'll have a lunch in about a month. Okay. Maybe you need to get into a community group. Here at Grace Community, our community groups are one of the best ways you can find community because they meet during the week and it's smaller than this. It's hard to be a body in a room this big, right? It's a little overwhelming. It's hard to go deep. You know, it's hard to go deep on a Sunday morning right after church when your stomach's growling. But at community group, we sit around with each other and it's smaller, and we share our hearts. We open God's word. We pray for each other. We get to know each other. What are we trying to do? What James is saying right here. We're trying to practice this and learn it. And listen, it's hard when you first step into it, it's awkward. You step into something new, you're like, oh, I don't know anybody. This feels weird. You got to push through that because it's worth it. And it's what we're called to. So let me just close with this. You know, I mentioned at the beginning, everything in our flesh resists this. It's deep in me. I got it bad. Where I want to be a lone ranger. I want to be without community. I want to be able to do whatever I want to do and not have to answer to anybody. You see that in your heart? Question is, how do we get the power and motivation to actually choose and move into community? And the answer is this it's through the gospel. It is the gospel of grace that calls us into community and that shapes our community. You know, that's why we named our church what we named our church: Grace, community. Because we felt like this is what God wants. He wants a group of people who are so rooted in the gospel that they say, wait a minute, this calls us into deep fellowship with each other. And we're trying to live that out. So how does the gospel motivate and empower this in our life? Well, you know what we say all the time. What does the gospel tell us? Two basic things. One, you're worse than you know. The gospel really does tell us that. When we look at the gospel, we see a cross. And what we see is the only way for me to be brought back to God was for the perfect Son of God to be crucified for me. Like that tells me I am far more broken than I think. You know, so often we're tempted to go around and think, you know, I got a few habits I got to work on, I got a few quirks, but generally I'm doing okay. Please look at the gospel, and it tells us I am far more broken and in need than I realize. But secondly, the gospel tells us we're more loved and accepted in Christ than we could ever dare to dream. Through the sheer work of Jesus alone, we are brought into fellowship with the Father. We are made righteous before the Father. We are brought into his embrace in spite of what's true of us. Those are true at the same time in the gospel. Okay, so what how does that work and drive us into community? Well, one, I realize I need community. I need people in my life. If I don't have accountability, there's no telling where I'm headed, right? Because I'm so broken. I need people in my life, and the gospel shows me I need ministry. We all need ministry. But secondly, it tells us we are accepted, fully accepted in Christ. So it gives us the courage to move into community. It gives us the courage to be honest about our life. It also shows us wait, he pursued me when I had nothing to offer him. So that, you know what that makes me want to do? It makes me want to pursue other people. The more that his pursuing grace hits home in my heart, I'm like, yeah, I want to move towards the mess. I see somebody hurting. When the gospel's penetrating my heart, I'm like, I want to jump right in there in love. Why? Because I'm experiencing his pursuing love for me. That's how the gospel works. You know, in the gospel, God committed himself to me in covenant. Wow, when I get that, I'm like, sure, I'll commit myself to this group of people. I'm yours and you're mine, right? Because God is a covenant-making God. Right? The gospel is the power to motivate us into community. So this morning we get to practice this through coming to the communion table. And you know, oftentimes when we think about communion, we're thinking about the vertical level, that here at the table we're reminded of how the shed blood of Jesus unites us to God, brings us into relationship with Him. But you know what scripture also tells us? Communion brings us together with one another. It destroys everything that divides us. If you think about it, everything about us, how we look, what we have, how we dress, what we do, our status, our position. Are you cool? Are you uncool? Are you athletic? Are you artsy? Whatever is true about you in the world that says really matters, the gospel says none of that matters. The only thing that matters is we've been rescued by Jesus. That makes us one with each other. And so communion is intended to point us to our union with each other. If you think about it, we we we come up together, we kneel together, we eat of one loaf together, we confess our sins as one. So my encouragement this morning, especially in light of our text, is take in the corporate horizontal dynamics of communion. Let it remind you as you see one another coming forward. Let the table show you wait, I'm one with that person. We're made one together. Father, we come this morning confessing to you our sins against you and our sins against one another. Our failures to love you with our whole heart and our failures to love our neighbor as ourselves. All of our sins are contained in those two commandments. So, Lord, we come and we acknowledge we need your rescuing grace. We need it fresh every day. But Lord, we rejoice that your mercies are new every morning and that we get to come to your table here and experience your grace and experience your work to make us one with each other. So, Lord, I pray now that you would set apart these elements, this bread and this wine for your holy use, that by it you would deepen our union with you and with each other. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.