First Baptist Church
November 11, 2001
James 5:13-18
Faith Healing
Have you ever been to a Faith Healing Service? I’m not just talking about going to a worship service and there is prayer for healing. I’m talking about going to see people like Benny Hinn . . . and others who have services that are designed to heal those who can’t walk, give sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf. Those with back pains are to find healing and so on. Of course, if you don’t find healing, then it’s probably your fault, because your faith wasn’t strong enough. It may sound like I’m condemning faith healing? But isn’t that societies view; and if you’ve never witnessed it, you’re probably as skeptical as the next person about healing.
I know people in this church who have been healed by one person’s prayer. I knew a 25 year old woman who had a brain tumor the size of a baseball. It impacted her life to the point she couldn’t drive, work and her husband became her care taker. 100’s if not 1,000’s of people were praying for her, nothing was happening. 2 days before her surgery, she had her final cat scan so the surgeon would know exactly the spot to operate. Doctors saw that her tumor shrunk to the size of a large grape. They were astounded because the only medication she was given was to help prevent seizures. She never needed surgery and eventually she was told the tumor was gone.
My best friend, you know him, Tim . . . has prayed for his son James for almost all of James’ 18 years to be healed from epilepsy. I remember many days in seminary when Tim and Claudette were exhausted from prayer and the impact the seizures were having on James young body. Today, James is an 18 year old young man who has to live with epilepsy.
Do Tim and Claudette have less faith, less power, less salvation than others who find healing? One of the great struggles we find in the church is why some find healing and others with just as much faith, if not more, seem to find no healing — and at times more hardship.
Friends we’ve spent the past 12 weeks buried in James, I hope, I pray that we’ve grown together and learned what it means to be a Christian. We began with James telling us to ask God for wisdom, now we come to the concluding section and James tells us to pray. Like Paul, James tells us to pray in all circumstances. He tells us to pray when we’re in trouble or suffering, pray when we’re happy and rejoicing and pray when we’re sick. That seems to cover our lives. Either we’re suffering, rejoicing or sick.
I want to briefly mention the first two situations, pray when in trouble and pray when happy. Then we’ll spend most of our time on the final category, in our times of sickness.
It almost seems too obvious, pray when in trouble. I can’t think of many of us who wouldn’t pray when we’re in trouble. Of course, many of our prayers at those moments are the old "Lord get me out of this mess, and I’ll do this or that for you. . ." That’s not the type of prayer James has in mind. Throughout this letter, James has been instructing us to call on God for our needs.
Prayer opens up the door to our heart and soul. It’s a reminder that we must be dependent upon God and that we really don’t have the control we so much desire. When we read Psalms, we find prayer after prayer of ordinary people who were struggling with various forms of suffering.
The hope in prayer is that our inner self will be changed. We will be transformed because we come to God with earnest, sincere prayer. We may be the one who created our problems, or they may be the result of evil in the world -- nonetheless, the call of James is to call on God to bring healing. Usually our the greatest healing we can experience is healing from our inner struggles, rather than the problem.
The second reason to pray is because we’re happy. It’s a reminder that our joy and our blessings are truly a gift from God and giving thanks and singing songs of praise is the greatest way to show our joy. When we praise God for our blessings we are also brought back to earth, knowing that every gift is from God. We may have been involved in the activity, however, God is the author. It’s a constant reminder that in all situations, whether we are experiencing sorrow and troubles or exulting in the joys and blessings of life, we must call on God in prayer.
Now, comes one of those passages that so many people struggle with because there’s an inference that when we follow James’ formula we should find healing. In verse 14, James says ‘if anyone is sick, they should call the elders, who will come and pray over them, anointing them with oil — doing it all in the name of the Lord.’
There was a story about a man who was driving along a country road when he saw a 3-legged chicken. He was so amazed that he followed it and noticed the chicken was running at 30 mph.
"That’s a fast chicken," he thought, "I wonder just how fast it can run." He sped up and so did the chicken! Soon they were cruising at 45 mph! The man sped up and the chicken zoomed past him at 60 mph!
Suddenly, the chicken turned off the road and ran down a long driveway. The man followed the chicken to the house and saw a man in the yard with dozens of 3-legged chickens.
He called out to the farmer, "How’d you get all these 3-legged chickens?"
The farmer said, "I breed them; my wife, son and I love eating chicken legs. Since a chicken only has two legs, I started breeding this 3-legged variety so we could all eat our favorite piece."
The driver shouted, "That’s amazing! How do they taste?"
The farmer replied, "We don’t know, we’ve never been able to catch them!"
A lot of us are like that amused driver who spotted the 3 legged chicken when it comes to healing. We’re amazed by healings that occur in Bible stories. We cry out, WOW!
We like the idea of God healing our bruised, sick bodies, and we’ve prayed about it, read stories about it, heard others tell stories about it, but just like the farmer, we’ve never tasted the joy of divine healing.
It may seem that divine healing was only supposed to occur in ancient days, and when we pray, or even cry out for healing, our hope seems to run faster than a 3-legged chicken. Those miraculous healings happen to other people, not me. I remember when I first began reading the Bible and praying. I asked God to give me a sign. If you’re really so powerful, if you can really heal people, then heal my back problems. I prayed and prayed, but healing never came.
We may be left with a skeptical view of the healing powers of prayer — especially those healing services we see on television. We have difficulty accepting the fact that someone actually experienced God’s healing. We rationalize it away, thinking they would have gotten better anyway, or the medicine did it.
It’s like the story of the boy coming home from Sunday School telling his parents how Moses and the Israelites crossed the Red Sea. He described how the Israelites built bridges for their jeeps to cross the sea. Then, as Pharaoh’s army crossed the bridges, the bridge was booby-trapped, exploded and the whole Egyptian army was destroyed. The father asked his excited son, if that was really the way it happened. And the boy responded, "No, but if I told you what they really said at church, you wouldn’t believe it." That very well may be how some of us would respond, we just can’t believe it can happen. Maybe Jesus and the disciples could do it, but today, no way.
James says the ‘sick should call the elders of the church and they will come, anoint you with oil and pray in the name of the Lord.’ Now many of you might say we don’t have elders here, we have deacons so that doesn’t apply to us. Wrong!! This is a scripture that honestly we don’t apply at our church. You may call a friend and tell someone you’re sick, you may ask for a friend or family member to be placed on the prayer chain, but why don’t we ask for a group of strong believers in Jesus, people whom you consider leaders of the church to come to you and pray over you?
The elders did nothing magical or really mystical. They anoint the person with olive oil. I’ve anointed people with oil. I have some in a little vial that comes from Israel, but the oil could be anything, maybe even motor oil. You see, the oil isn’t magic, it’s a means of calling on God, it’s symbolic. The early Christians used oil because oil was also the medicine of choice in the 1st century. If we were to choose the medicine of choice today, we might ground up a bunch of Tylenol, mix it in water and anoint someone with that.
Applying the oil was intended as an outer sign of faith, enabling the person to become more open and receptive to the healing power of God. It’s just like in baptism, the water doesn’t save you and in anointing it isn’t the oil that heals, it’s God. That’s why James adds that when the elders pray over a person, it must be done in the name of the Lord. For it is the Lord who is the ultimate healer. Does it matter if it’s medicine or oil that brings healing? After all, God is the creator of both. It’s been said, "The best combination for healing is a healthy blend of penicillin and prayer."
The result of the prayer is that the sick person will be made well and the Lord will raise him up from his sick bed. Also, if the person has sinned, they will be forgiven. This demonstrates God’s healing is not just a physical healing but a spiritual healing of forgiveness as well.
James then turns to each of us and says we are to confess our sins to one another and we are to pray for one another. The prayers of a righteous person are powerful and effective. When we confess our sins before God we are forgiven and made righteous through the saving grace and work of Christ. When we confess our sins to those we have wronged we create an atmosphere of love and caring that is a healthy one - a redeemed, forgiven one. One in which we are able to pray for one another in love.
Finally, James reminds us that Elijah was just an ordinary man who prayed that it wouldn’t rain, and it didn’t rain for 3½ years. Elijah’s prayer was answered because his desire was to show the power of God. He wanted others to see how powerful God was. It wasn’t for Elijah’s gain or fame, he just wanted others to experience, first hand, the power and awesome ways of God.
As I said earlier, some people pray and they hear nothing. We pray for healing and death comes instead. We pray for a new job or a relationship made right, and again nothing. It becomes easy to get very cynical of God’s promises in these verses.
In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul wrote about his affliction, his thorn. He prayed for healing but never received it. Instead, he learned to persevere by relying on God’s strength. Pastor Robert Wise of Oklahoma City tells of a woman whose husband was about to die. Wise said he was struggling with the fact that the man was not healed. The wife looked at Wise and said, "Death is the greatest miracle of all. Death is the final healing!" I look at the words of Isaiah (53:5), when he wrote "By His wounds we are healed." I believe because of the wounds of Jesus, we will be healed. Maybe in this lifetime, but definitely, when we believe in the life that is to come.
We don’t have all the answers. Why don’t some of our noblest and most sincere prayers get answered as we desire. Honestly, "I don’t know." But it is called trusting and having faith that God does know that answer.
