James | My Words Build Up (September 1st, 2019) - Mike Armstrong

If you would uh grab a copy of God's Word if you have one with you or a Bible app on your phone and turn it to James chapter five.

It's where we're gonna be today as we conclude our series in the book of James.

By the way, if you uh you don't have a Bible, you don't own a Bible, or maybe you didn't bring a Bible, we do have uh some copies uh at the back right now.

And uh if you were even just to put up your hand right now, I know one of our ushers would love to come and uh and bring you one.

And if again, if you don't own one, that's our gift to you, just keep it and uh and take it home and uh get into it uh on your own.

All right, well, I don't know if uh any of you are wired a little bit like I am, but uh I tend to be uh super fussy when it comes to you know where I put my things.

All right, or any of you like this?

Like I'm the guy who like I put my phone in my same same pocket every single time so I know exactly where it is, keys, wallets, you know, all of that kind of stuff.

At my house, I'm like I put it here on this shelf.

And when I go somewhere, I make sure that I know I put my you know my my things over there so that um I don't forget it and I don't lose it.

And so from time to time though, when I get away from all of that and I forget and I do lose something, uh it grinds my gears.

Okay, that's just kind of how I am.

Now, now my wife, she's pretty good at uh that kind of thing as well, but uh definitely not to the same, you know, uptight and intense degree that I am about that.

And I was kind of thinking about it this week.

It kind of reminds me of a time very early uh in our marriage, I would guess in year one, uh, we happened to attend uh a wedding of some friends of ours.

It was a long way from home.

All right, and so this is you know, before we had kids, of course, and all of that.

And so in those days, you know, you stay right to the end, right?

And so we stayed uh to the end, it was late, and you know, as we had left and we had gone home, we were, you know, I don't know, like an hour or two away from where the reception was, when all of a sudden it dawned on Anne.

She was like, oh no, I left my coat at the reception.

And so for me, driving, it's probably like 1 a.m.

or whatever, you know, everything starts to go through my mind.

Again, keeping understanding how I'm wired, right?

And I and I'm and I'm like frustrated about this, and I'm you know thinking like, how does this happen?

Like, how do you not, you know, how do you not like you know, do a double check before you leave?

And it was before the days we had cell phones, you couldn't just call them and say, hey, someone grab that for me.

And we knew the place would be, you know, long closed down.

And so we kind of, you know, after a few frenzied moments of trying to figure out what to do, uh, we decided, you know, it's it's gone, right?

We we ain't getting that thing back.

And I remember in a moment of frustration, I just turned to Ange and really just said to her, you know what?

You're ridiculous.

I'm glad you're laughing, because we can laugh about this now.

It's like a dozen years ago or so, and so we've had some years to heal over this uh unfortunate situation.

Um, but I said that with as much disgust and disdain as possible uh dripping from my words.

And uh I'll never ever forget the reaction that those words get.

As you can imagine, it probably uh wasn't too good.

Um, but it actually caused uh my dear wife to uh tear up.

And I remember uh it was really, you know, I'd never experienced, you know, making my wife cry before uh was something that I'd said.

By the way, just to let you know, like I got her permission to share this.

Right?

She was actually telling me a little bit earlier this week, she was like, you know, you could share the story where you, you know, you told me that I'm stupid, and I'm like, no, no, like that's that's not the word I use, not that what I said was much better.

Um but no, I mean I remember that just being a sickening feeling as I realized, man, I didn't I didn't mean her to feel that bad about this, but I, you know, I wasn't watching myself, right?

I wasn't careful in what I said.

And for me, uh it was such a sobering reminder of just the damage that a careless word uh can cause.

Now, James, right, this is the the the letter, the book that we have been studying now over the last uh, well, this is week 11 of it and our final one, he's already addressed uh the power of the tongue, right?

He's addressed uh what our words are all about.

Back in chapter three, in the first 12 verses of that, we went through that already.

Now, today, in the conclusion of uh his letter, he comes back to this topic as a way of reminding and coaching us to recognize not just the destructive power of our words, and we already know that.

I'm an awful example of how that is true, right?

But also the positive impact that they can have.

And specifically on the building up of the church, our relationships with each other here.

All right, and so as we go through this, I think really what it does is it begs the question that we all have to ask ourselves will I, will you, will we choose, decide, commit to being people who use our words to build up and be a blessing to each other here, to the church?

And can I just say that this really comes down to you and I choosing to be intentional about this?

That's why we use like the word commitment here.

Are you gonna commit to do this?

Are you gonna decide to use your words in a way that builds up?

Because if we do not choose to do this, and our if we're not intentional about this, guess what?

Our words will inevitably be uh negative, right?

We'll inevitably slide into sinfulness in this.

It requires a certain intentionality.

Now let's just read this here, what James himself has to say about this.

Chapter 5, starting in verse 12 down to the end.

Follow along with me.

He says, But above all, my brothers, do not swear either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your yes be yes and your no be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.

Is anyone among you suffering?

Let him pray.

Is anyone cheerful?

Let him sing praise.

Is any one among you sick?

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.

And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up.

And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.

The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain.

And for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth.

Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.

My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

Let's pray.

Father, we uh thank you for the great blessing that it is to gather as your church and to seek your faith.

Father, we know that it was you know only you know a few short weeks ago that we actually tackled the topic of our tongues.

And so, Lord, we should be well aware of the destructive capability of it.

But Lord, we also see here uh in the text how our words can also be very beneficial to our fellow brothers and sisters in the church.

And God, I pray that as we you know unpack these verses and as we see you and your heart for us and and your heart for us to be you know a blessing to each other in the church and to see it built up through the words that we speak.

God, I pray uh that we would desire this.

Father, we know that our desire can often be to harm, our desire can be to withdraw and retreat and and and and just be you know what we think is kind of neutral in terms of blessing.

We're not we're not pouring ourselves out, we're not doing too much negative, Lord.

This this kind of no man's land, that's not what you call us to.

You call us to be a blessing.

And Lord, you want to build your church through us.

And so, God, as we read these things and look at these things, I pray that we would be humbled in this.

I pray that we would seek your face, your grace, your power.

Lord, that is what we need, that is what makes your church special.

And so, God, we invite you to move powerfully again today as your word is open.

We pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, here's the first thing uh this morning, jumping right into it here.

I will use my words to build up our church, all right, demonstrating reliability as a person who follows through on my promises.

Now, if you uh just kind of take a peek uh at your Bible here for a second uh and just kind of look at the page there, verse 12, you'll notice, is probably you know built right into that previous section uh that we looked at uh last week on suffering.

Now, there is, you know, I guess some debate about where verse 12 itself uh fits best because uh quick glance at it there kind of makes it appear like it doesn't really fit at all, actually, within the context.

Uh and so some people think that it should be included in the previous part on suffering there, and and a lot of our Bible translators have included it there as they break it down in topics and paragraphs.

We need to understand in the original text, it wasn't broken up uh that way.

It was all kind of in one uh big uh clump, if you will, of uh of words.

And so some would say it belongs to that.

Others would say, you know, verse 12 is on his own.

A friend of mine, uh, when he preached the book of James, he decided to preach verse 12 as uh as its own sermon, and that's totally uh fine to do as well.

Uh but I think um it probably slots in best with the rest of this passage because of the, you know, loose, certainly, but but definitely common theme of speech and words in these final uh eight verses.

All right.

Now I just kind of share all of that with you in case last week you're like, wait a second, he forgot about verse 12.

Are we skipping verses now?

No, we're not.

We're just including it here.

All right, well, enough of that.

Let's get right to it.

Verse 12 says this.

It says, but above all, okay, which which signals the beginning of the conclusion of his letter.

He says, Above all, my brothers, do not swear.

Okay, do not swear.

Now, I think oftentimes when we think about you know swearing, we we you know what comes to mind for us is is vulgar language.

Well, that's not what this is referring to.

It's referring uh rather to uh the use of flippant and uh a careless, voluntary oaths.

Okay, more on that in a second.

But it says there, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your yes be yes and your no be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.

Now you might be kind of thinking, like, what's up with oaths?

You know, like you seem to see this in the scriptures, you know, why, you know, what are they?

You know, what are what are the reasons for oaths?

Well, the reason that a person uh would take an oath would be, as uh one author puts it, to invoke God's name to guarantee the reliability of what he's saying.

All right, so maybe you've done something like this before to show somebody, try to convince somebody how serious you were about your intentions.

You've said something like, hey man, I swear to God I'll pay you back.

Right?

You said something like that before, or or I swear on my mother's grave, right, that my word is my bonds.

Okay, well, according to James, uh that's just not necessary.

Okay, don't need to do that at all.

He says, just let your yes be yes and your no be no.

Simple.

Now, there's a couple of commentators here that help us kind of understand what James means here.

We're gonna get these quotes up on the screen.

First one, Douglas Mu says, our truthfulness should be so consistent and dependable that we need no oath to support it.

A simple yes or no should suffice.

Yeah, I think that's good.

C.

L.

Mitten was uh an author and commentator.

He wrote, our mere word should be as utterly trustworthy as a signed document, legally correct and complete.

Okay, I think all of that is good.

All of that is true.

But to just be clear here for a second, it's it's not to say or to go so far as to say that every single example of oath taking is sinful.

We're not saying that.

I mean, the Bible doesn't universally forbid or ban the taking of oaths.

Right?

You think about, you know, maybe an official oath or a legal oath.

You might swear in court.

I don't see anything wrong with that, for example.

Okay, and I think we need to also realize here that God himself took oaths uh to guarantee a promise.

We see that if you want to jot this down, Hebrews 3, verse 11.

Hebrews 3:11

All right, so so James, following almost word for word what Jesus said in uh Matthew chapter 5, likely has Leviticus 19, verse 12 in mind.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention Leviticus 19:12

You can jot that down as well.

Leviticus 19, 12.

Here's what it says it says, you shall not swear by my name falsely.

Yeah, that's a key word.

You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God.

Okay, so this is to say that you and I are to be people of integrity, right?

People who who mean what we say and follow through on what we have promised to somebody or what we have committed to do.

We're to be dependable, we're we're to be trustworthy, we are to be reliable individuals, right?

Don't swear falsely, don't make a promise with no intention to follow through on that.

We shouldn't anchor oaths flippantly to God or to gods or to you know deceased loved ones or or or swear to them, right?

We we should just be known as, you know, I'm a reliable person who people when when you know that when we say something, we straight up mean it.

Right?

We're trustworthy, we we keep our promises.

We have a good reputation as honorable people within the church community and certainly outside of it as well.

Now it would appear here by the by the fact that James mentions this and he and he's getting the church to consider these things and think about these things, it would it would definitely seem that this church, these churches that were reading this, were they were getting pretty loose on this stuff.

Right?

They were taking oaths carelessly and and thoughtlessly.

They were invoking the name of God or or maybe lesser things, and then and then they were kind of wriggling or squirming out from underneath, following through.

Right?

That's thus they were proving themselves to be very unreliable people or of flawed character.

There were those that they made the promises to, they were, you know, they were just kind of left high and dry.

Which is, of course, not loving people well.

Right?

Is that is that safe to say?

I think it is.

Right?

And that's something that that James has you know has been passionately challenging these churches and us to do, right?

We're to love people well, as those who have been loved well by God through Jesus Christ.

Right?

That is our motive.

The gospel is always our motive in all obedience to God.

I'm supposed to love people because God has loved me.

He's given me, He's spared nothing.

He's given me his one and only Son who died on the cross that I might be forgiven, that I might be redeemed, and my relationship with God can be fixed.

All right, so you can see here how the swearing of oaths and not being true to their promises was a way that their words were harming the church.

They weren't building it up, they they they weren't being a blessing in this way because it was what was it doing?

When we when we don't we don't follow through on our promises, it it damages the trust necessary, required to build, grow strong and healthy relationships within a church community.

Now, as you think about yourself, when you think about your words and your reliability and your promises and all of that, would you, you know, what would you say about yourself?

Have you started to slide kind of you know into kind of a bad place where these churches appear to be?

You know, where are you at with all of that?

When people consider your words and your promises and your commitments and all of that, which all again give evidence of where your character is really at, what would they say about you?

What would they say about those things?

That you demonstrate reliability, or would they have just cause to say that your words, frankly, don't mean much?

You know, as you think uh of a few arenas, you know, in your life, let's consider this a little bit.

Think about you know, within your family, right?

Strong families make a strong church.

And so as you consider your words to your family, what would they say?

You know, husbands, fathers.

Have you made it uh a habit to overpromise and undeliver?

You know, guys, I I I promise I'm gonna put the computer away during dinner.

I'm gonna spend time with you.

I promise that on my next day off, we're gonna do something great together as a family.

But they're starting to see that you just you you can't shut that part off.

And and yeah, you're you're promising, and yeah, you're saying the right things, but but you're proving to be unreliable.

How about for for us in in small groups in our church?

What kind of commitments have you made to the people in your small group family?

I think lots of them.

I think you know, I'll I'll be there every time we gather, I'm gonna be consistent about, I'm gonna be on time, I'm I'm I'm gonna be prepared, I'm gonna be involved, I'm gonna I'm gonna contribute to all of this.

When we you know sign up for a small group and we get involved, this is what we're committing to do.

Well, would the people in your small group say that you're following through on those types of things?

Or are you the person who is chronically late?

Are you the person who you know clearly hasn't put any thought into the discussion?

Are you the person who says, yeah, man, I'm gonna pray for you this week about that thing that you mentioned to me?

Are you the person who forgets about that and and you don't pray?

Are you reliable?

How about when it comes just to serving in the church?

You know, some of us, a lot of us really, we've we've committed to serving in one or more uh positions in the church.

Are you faithful to that?

Are you following through on your commitment?

Do you come ready to roll?

Do you come with hearts that are that are ready?

Do you come with with joy?

Are you quick to skip out on responsibilities with all of these things?

You can tell here that I'm going to bat for some of our ministry leaders who schedule people in Planning Center and struggle with some of the difficulty of all of that.

Listen, consider this week how you can grow in these types of areas as one who demonstrates greater reliability.

The words that you that you speak and you say your commitments, your your promises are backed up by action.

I'm a person who follows through with these things, and I'm committed to building up the church in this way.

Here's the second thing.

I will use my words to build up our church, praying fervently for healing while leaving the results to God.

Take a look at verse 13 now with me.

James asks the question Is anyone among you suffering?

Right?

Which again is a is a common theme here that James has referred to throughout.

We talked a lot about that even just last week.

He says, Anyone around among you suffering?

Well, let him pray, right?

Which is which is another crucial, you know, way that you and I we use our words, right?

I understand that not all prayer is audible, and you know, we can pray in our spirit, in our mind, absolutely, but it is certainly uh one way that we use our words, and what this these next bunch of verses here are really all about.

Now, because he's already challenged these believers to be joyful in suffering, because because God is working in our hearts through it and to endure suffering, you know, with patience, knowing that the Lord is returning and that will be soon, because he's already addressed all of that in his letter already, and again, in the verses we just looked at last week, we can you know we can presume that these are the things that he intends that you and I pray for.

Right?

He goes on.

He says, Is anyone cheerful?

Let him sing praise.

Now, I think you could you know make the argument easily that it's actually harder to praise the Lord through song or through prayer when life is good.

Have you sensed that in your own life?

There's nothing like difficulty and trial and suffering to help us know how badly we need the Lord, right?

When life is is easier and things seem to be going smoothly, we we really get self-sufficient uh real fast here.

And so he he challenges us on that.

You know, verse 14, look what he says.

He says, Is anyone among you sick?

Well, let him call for the elders of the church and let him pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.

Now, what's what's that part all about?

Right?

Well, like, well, what's this whole anointing with oil thing mean?

Right?

Well, you know, there have been you know lots of different takes on on what this might have been about.

One of the most most popular opinions was that, you know, well, this had a you know kind of a medicinal purpose to it.

And there's no doubt that oil was used in the ancient world to, you know, in in terms of healing and medicinal purposes.

Now, I I don't believe that that's exactly what this means here in this context.

I'm not sure why you would need to go to an elder of a church for you know, you know, medicinal healing.

I mean, you could go to a doctor, you could even uh anoint yourself with oil, so to speak.

And so I don't really think that that's what this is uh really getting at here.

I think the best way to understand this, as one author wrote, is really it's a symbolic act.

That's what the oil is representative, right?

It's a it's a symbolic act that shows how the sick person is being set apart for God's special attention and care.

All right, so that's what this is all about, right?

So show this this special moment here where God is giving you a, you know, uh, again, kind of specific, intentional, special care.

And so this anointing with oil is is accompanied by verse 15, take a look, the prayer of faith.

Right?

The prayer of faith.

That word for prayer that that James uses here in this instance, it carries with it in the original language this strong sense of fervency, right?

Fervency, fervent prayer should be made for the sick person, right?

For the person who is who is ill, and it and it's this this fervent prayer of faith that will save the one who is sick, it says, and the Lord will raise him up.

Now that word save, you see that there in the verse, that word save is the word sozo, which often refers in the scriptures to spiritual salvation.

But listen, it's also used, especially many times in the gospels, as we see Jesus heal people and raise them from the dead, it was used many times to refer to physical healing, which I think is clearly the context here.

You know, keep going.

And if he, that's the sick person, has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another.

All right, so not just elders praying for church members, but but kind of any one of us, each of us praying for each other here as we are sick, that you may be, it says, healed.

The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

Okay, and then he goes on here to give us an example of how powerful and effective the prayer of a righteous person is.

Take a look at verse 17.

He says, Elijah was a man with a nature like ours.

Okay, so as much as Elijah the prophet was uh was a legend in in Israel, it's also saying here, he's just he's just a regular dude.

Right?

He's a guy who's just a regular human nature like like you or I.

He's not like some kind of Jedi knight, he's not a he's not a superhero, he's not angelic, right?

He's just he's just a regular guy, a nature like ours.

It says this though, and he prayed fervently, there's that word, that it might not rain.

And for three years and six months, three and a half years, it did not rain on the earth.

Wow.

So then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.

Pretty amazing, and you can read all about that in 1 Kings 17 and 18.

Now, a lot there, right?

I think a number of things that that um that we can say about really all of this in these verses that we've just read.

First of all, first of all, there appears to be a clear connection here in verse 16 uh to the reality that sometimes our our physical sickness and and our various bodily ailments can be caused by our sin.

All right, you see that there?

Sin can make us physically sick.

And maybe you've had that strong sense about yourself or about someone that you know.

However, okay, important that we say this.

However, we need to be really careful here to not always assume, okay, that a person's illness is for sure a result of their sin.

Okay, the book of Job, I think, teaches us this very clearly.

I don't know if you remember the book of Job, but but Job's friends assumed wrongly that his problems and and his downfalls, health and and otherwise, was a result of, you know, in their minds, what must have been unconfessing in his life.

Right?

And you remember they pressed him on it and they needled him and and they they were pretty hard on him about this.

And they're like, man, how proud do you have to be?

How many more things can be taken away from you?

How much, how many more boils can you have on your body before you will just repent?

And and Job, all the way through, he he maintains his innocence.

He's like, I don't think there's any sin in my life.

I don't think that's what this is about.

And of course, the book itself tells us, the reader, that the cause for Job's suffering was due to the fact that the Lord had given permission to Satan to strike him with these afflictions as a test of Job's love for God.

Okay, so for us, we can't be too hasty here in attributing every ache and pain and in even our diseases to sin.

Right?

At the same time, I think we need to be mindful of, you know, maybe we're not being healed because there is some kind of sin that we're holding on to and we're not dealing with.

We should understand that these verses are encouraging us and urging us to be quick to confess our sins, right?

Whether that's to the elders of our church or or others in our church who are praying for us, so that, you know, just in case, he uses the word if, just in case our sin might be playing a part in our sickness, we can be forgiven and find healing.

Okay, that's the, I think, kind of first thing that is a question mark for us as we read this.

I think the second big thing here that needs some addressing is what appears to be this unconditional promise to heal all our sicknesses as long as the person praying has enough faith to believe that it will be done.

Again, I think, you know, we've probably, likely, seen and heard of uh of multiple examples of ways that have been, you know, people have been harmed by this kind of thinking and this kind of teaching.

Damage has been done to people who've been told that the reason they've not been healed of their illness is because of their insufficient trust in God.

Imagine hearing that?

Like so great.

Okay, not only do I still have this disease that I've got to carry, but now I've also got to carry around with me the fact that my faith is flimsy and lousy.

Perfect, that's great.

I don't think that's good.

I don't think that's that's not right at all.

Certainly not helpful.

What we need to understand here is that the fervent prayer of faith does bring God's healing.

It does.

When it's God's plan to do so.

We have to keep in mind here that sometimes God, in his sovereignty, he has a different plan for us.

Right?

You remember Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, he prayed three times, remember, for the thorn in his flesh to be removed.

2 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

Was it?

No.

It's hard to point to a more godly guy full of faith and trust than Paul.

But that's not the plan that God had in store for him.

The Lord decided to use this thorn in his flesh to teach Paul that in the absence of physical healing, God's grace would be sufficient for him.

Right?

That's what Paul even says a few verses later.

And the exact same thing goes for you and I.

Can God heal us?

Absolutely.

Right?

And we've all seen and heard and maybe even experienced that kind of miraculous healing before.

It's an amazing thing.

Does he sometimes heal us?

Yes.

And when he does, it's that prayer of faith that heals.

Okay, which keep in mind are both gifts from God.

Right?

God will give us both the prayer of faith, the faith to believe, and the healing itself.

These are not things that that faith is not your own.

It's a gift of God.

Right?

And if the healing is not in God's plan for you and for I, he's no less awesome for it.

Listen, church, I think one of the most amazing takeaways for us here as we look at this passage here is that God cares about our physical suffering and sicknesses.

Right?

That's an amazing thing to think about that.

Is he ultimately concerned with with the state of our hearts and our spiritual health and our and our spiritual well-being?

Yeah, he is.

I think that's that's fair to say.

That's why sometimes he withholds physical healing from us.

Because it teaches us in those moments to cling to him, right?

It teaches us deeper spiritual things that we don't naturally know and and cling to and understand.

We need to be taught those things from and in our hearts.

Okay, but this passage shows us that God has a heart for us when we're sick and when we suffer.

I I think that's that's a good word for us when I think it can be a temptation for Christians and and sometimes churches to you know kind of minimize the physical trials and minimize the physical suffering and and just focus on the spiritual and well, that stuff doesn't really matter.

God cares about your heart.

Well, that yeah, that's all that's true, and lots of Bible for all of that, but I think it's amazing to see that God actually cares about us when we're suffering.

Is that not is that not comforting to you?

I love here that in these verses we see that as the church, where we're totally given the green light to go ahead and and pray fervently for each other's physical healing.

Right?

So use your words, use your your prayers, Christians, to build each other up in this way.

When you're when you're sick and when you're struggling, don't be afraid to open up about those things to people in the church.

Don't be afraid to say, listen, I got a doctor's appointment coming up and and and I'm anxious about this.

Would you would you pray for me?

Would you pray that I would be healed?

Would you pray that that the Lord would would clear all this up to his glory?

Would you pray that that I would trust him even if the the answer is not exactly what I would want?

Would you pray for me in this thing in this?

I think our church is pretty strong at this, to be honest with you.

I think I hear lots about lots of people praying for each other with the various illnesses and problems that we have from a health perspective.

I hear about a lot of it, and I'm always encouraged when we pray for each other.

Don't be afraid to open up about this stuff.

At the same time, don't be afraid to ask our elders for prayer as well.

I want to let you know that you can ask us to anoint you with oil.

That is totally something that we do from time to time and we have done.

This is not just an ancient practice that is not done anymore.

I actually, you know, have uh a little you know flask of oil actually even with me today.

And if you would desire that, just approach us and and ask.

And we would love, love, love to pray for you in all of this.

And of course, in all of these things, as we pray prayers of faith, and we pray, we pray fervently, and we pray boldly for these things and expectant of these things, at the end of the day, we we leave the result of all of it to God, right?

That's what we do.

And and and pray that our hearts would get to the place where we genuinely were like, you know, Lord, not my will be done, but but yours be done.

Right?

We'll we'll trust Him with how it all plays out.

Final thing here, the third thing.

I will use my words to build up our church, restoring the wayward with loving biblical guidance.

We see this in the last two verses here.

Verse 19 says, My brothers, which of course you've noticed, is it's James's favorite way of addressing uh the church, because it shows his sincere love for them, right?

The heart that he has for them, brothers, meaning brothers or sisters, right?

My brothers, if if if anyone among you, right, in the church wanders from the truth, okay.

Now, what truth is he talking about here?

Well, the truth of the gospel, certainly, right?

It's it's it's many implications for us as individuals and as a church community, which of course James has been writing to them about all the way along through his letter.

And so he's saying here, if any of you drifts away from the truth of the gospel and all that I've mentioned in here, keep going, he says, and someone in the church brings him back, okay, so restores the wayward person by pleading with him or her to repent of their sin and return to the truth that they claim to believe and hold to.

He says, Let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul, that's the sinner's soul, from death.

Okay, talking about spiritual death, and will cover a multitude of sins.

It will protect them from eventual and potentially ultimate spiritual ruin.

Remember that for James, we've talked about this multiple points along the way, being a doer who acts, right?

A doer of the word and not a hearer only.

That's all in chapter one.

That for him is so, so important.

Right?

It should be for us as well.

That's that's that's who we are as Christians.

That's what we do.

To believe something is to act on it, to live in line with it.

So, with all that James is said here throughout throughout these five chapters, he's now urging us to use our words and take his words, which is God's word, and guide wayward struggling people in the church back to the Lord, right?

And then have right fellowship with one another.

This is how a healthy church family is to function.

We don't turn a blind eye to each other's sin.

Well, that's just that, that's between them and the Lord.

Their faith is a private faith.

Nonsense! That's not that's not what it is.

We're a family.

We help each other out with these things.

Right?

A person, you know, a person gets saved and then makes a public declaration of their salvation and what God has done through baptism.

That's now yourself, you know, being accountable to the rest of the church.

And it's now up to us to help a person in their walk, and if they drift away from all of that, we call them back.

We plead with them to repent, we show them the errors of their way.

This is important to James and it's and it's key.

We are not a healthy church if we don't do this.

We don't turn a blind eye.

That's what a lot of people do, though.

That's not my business.

It is actually.

At the same time, we don't sit back helpless either.

And say, well, I don't know what to say.

And you know, I don't know how to do this.

Yeah, you do.

We've got the scriptures, right?

The scriptures tell us these things, the tell the scriptures tell us how and and when we should go about this.

As the church, we seek to be used by God to see wandering sinners restored through loving, biblical guidance.

Okay, all of this kind of got me thinking this week about what Paul himself said to uh to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 4, verses 1 and 2.

2 Timothy 4:1

You'll remember this and you'll know it well.

Here's what he says he says, I charge you, okay, here's the urging, right?

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom, here it is, preach the word.

Right?

Of course, I understand that Paul is saying this to a young pastor, to Timothy, but but all of us are to use the word of God in, you know, as we minister to other people.

Preach the word.

Be ready in season and out of season, he says, meaning at all times.

Use the word of God, reprove and rebuke.

Okay, sometimes a stronger word is is necessary when somebody is in rebellion.

We're to show them that through the word of God.

He says, reprove, rebuke.

He says, exhort.

Right?

There's that strong urging, there's that, there's that persuasion.

So when you see somebody wandering away and not living in line with the truth of the gospel, you you should, in a heartfelt, you know, fervent type way, urge them back to living in line with Christ.

It's not just a, you know, here's a mere suggestion, do whatever you want.

And we should have a heart for people to not see them wandering.

Down the wrong path towards something that's only gonna harm them and potentially harm other people as well.

Paul encourages Timothy as he finishes off in verse 2 here.

He says, with complete patience and teaching.

Right?

So we're to do this lovingly.

That is a key word for us.

As we seek to help people who are struggling and sinning in the church, can we just say this?

Let's not be jerks about this.

Let's get off our high horse about how awesome we are as believers.

No, the more we come to understand the gospel, the more we'll start to see, wow, I'm broken too.

And so as we consider the call here to go and help wayward Christians come back to living in line with Christ, we should be so humbled in that moment as we realize, man, I'm not the best at this either.

Which kind of helps kill all that self-righteous on my soapbox type of going after people that we tend to do.

It helps us get the, you know, yank the log out of our eye before we deal with the speck in our brother's eye.

We do this lovingly, we do this with complete patience.

We do this with teaching.

Do you see how all of this, it's us using our words to build up the church?

When we restore the wayward and the wandering, we're lovingly and boldly and humbly calling them to repent and instructing them carefully.

And when we do that, God uses it to save their souls from death.

If we refuse to go after our wayward brothers and sisters and refuse to hold the bar high and urge them to repentance, they continue to just march down this path that leads towards eternal judgment if they don't watch it.

True believers repent.

And the church, you know, we we play a role in calling them back to the Lord.

When they hear our loving words of truth, and the Lord convicts them of their wandering, it's also preventative of further harm.

It covers a multitude of sins, James says.

Sins that they might have otherwise committed had we not stepped in and been used by God.

Listen, this is messy stuff.

I'm not gonna pretend that this is easy.

I'd rather us be comfortable church.

I'd rather us be easy church.

I'd rather us be nice church.

And we're just gonna come here and you know, we're just gonna sit in a chair and we're just gonna hear pastor guys say things to make us feel good.

And I'm gonna get in small group just for the social component, not you know, not looking down on that.

Or we could realize that church is messy.

And that God actually calls us to that.

And that in that mess, we see God's grace.

And in that mess, as God changes us and as he uses us, and as he grows us, and as he heals us, we see that that kind of church is really what's best.

And so, really, I think the question comes down to it here for us.

Do we love each other enough here to do this?

Do we love the Lord God enough to obey Him in this?

Listen, I I'm I'm not trying to guilt you with law here.

Trying to remind us that God is worthy of this.

He has given us everything.

So therefore, we should not be holding back one ounce of anything that He has called us to do.

This is a this is a strong challenge, isn't it?

You notice that it's kind of an interesting way to just end his letter here, but this is how he does it.

And I think it's a it's a necessary challenge to something that's just so important for you and I.

And so again, how will you respond to this?

Again, will you be intentional?

Will you use your words to build up the church?