Confession and Prayer

We come now, Father, to your Word, the Bible, humbly asking for your help as we seek to study it so that we might not only understand what it says but that we might believe it, and that in believing it, that we might obey it, and that in being obedient to it, our lives may be transformed by it. Help us to this end, we humbly pray. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Please be seated. And I invite you to turn to James and chapter 5. The letter of James in the New Testament; I think it’s page 856 in the church Bibles. And we’ve come today, I believe, to the end of our studies in James. Tonight we’ll be in the final two verses, and this morning we deal with the three or four verses that lead up to that.

Well, let me just read the section that begins from verse 13 through to the end of the chapter:

“Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he 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 man is powerful and effective.

“Elijah was a man just like us. 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, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins.”

Amen.

Now, it’s good for us—indeed, it’s necessary for us—to remind ourselves, especially as we get to the end of this letter, that James is writing to a select group of individuals; select not in terms of their geographical destination, as in some of the other letters of the New Testament, but in relationship to their identity as sons and daughters of the living God. And I want purposefully to turn you, just for a moment, to 1:18 so that we might be in no doubt as to whom this letter is addressed.

In that eighteenth verse—and it’s some months ago now—we looked there and discovered God’s initiative, insofar as “he chose to give us birth.” This may seem a strange statement to people and wonder just what it could possibly mean. It’s the same kind of pondering that marked Nicodemus when he came to Jesus as a religious man by night, and he was, from his perspective, in a relationship with God. And Jesus said to him, “You know, Nicodemus, you actually have to be born again.” And Nicodemus says, “Well, I don’t understand that. How could I possibly be born again? Can I enter a second time into my mother’s womb and be born?” And Jesus goes on to explain to him that he’s speaking in spiritual terms.[1]

And this is something that we do not know by simply thinking. This is something that we only discover by God’s revelation—namely, that by our nature, we are dead in our trespasses and in our sins, and unless God comes to make us alive, we remain spiritually dead.[2] And the wonder of God’s dealings is that he comes in the person of his Son, taking the initiative and giving birth to sinners. And it is this that James emphasizes.

He then goes on—still in verse 18—to remind his readers that the instrument that God has used in bringing this spiritual birth about is “the word of truth.” We might think immediately in terms of our Bibles, and we wouldn’t be wrong there, but I think James probably has in mind not so much the written Word of Scripture, but the living Word—namely, Jesus himself, the one whom John introduces as the Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”[3] And he goes on to say of that Word, “In him was life, and that life was the light of men.”[4]

And the intention of God in doing this, in bringing people to birth “through the word of truth,” is that those who have come to this experience of the living God would be “a kind of firstfruits”[5]—an early indication of God’s ultimate purpose. And God’s ultimate purpose is to put together a people that are his very own that will begin increasingly to look like Jesus, until finally, one day, when they see him, they will be made absolutely like him. And when Paul writes concerning these things, he says, in a similar vein, to the Ephesians, “You also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.”[6]

And the question this morning, of course, that is then obvious to us is whether we fit the descriptive nature of those to whom James is writing. Are we able to look to a place, a time, in our lives when we recognized that we were brought from blindness to sight, from death to life, when we were included in Christ, when the Bible became alive to us, when hymns and songs became the expression of our hearts, and when, quite frankly, in biblical terms, we were just made new people?

And this, of course, is the wonder of God’s dealings. And that’s what we’ve been singing about this morning in a number of our hymns. And you may, if you are a skeptic or if you are a seeker, have had difficulty with some of those words, because in your heart of hearts, you knew that they were describing something that was not actually true of you, is not true of you. But the wonderful news of the Bible is that it may be true of you and that God wants to include you and to welcome you, so that the words that we’re now about to consider in James chapter 5 will be distinctly applicable to you.

And it is to those who have been included in Christ, then, that he gives these exhortations at the end of his letter. Because to be included in Christ is not to live singularly or solitarily but is to be brought into a family—to be brought into a group of people who are quite literally, in Jesus, our brothers and our sisters, united as a result of the initiative of the same Father, brought to life as a result of the living Word of Truth, and intended to take on a family likeness that will be a testimony to the power of God in the world.

And so, it is important that we realize that what James is saying as he draws his letter to the close is being said to the family, to the gathering of God’s people. And we need to think of it in terms of mutuality. That may seem very straightforward to some, and yet to others it may seem very countercultural—the whole idea of the corporate nature of our lives in a world that has embraced a fierce individualism.

I took what was offered to me as a spinning class on one day of last week. Some of you will know what that is. Those of you who think it’s standing around with a spinning top will need to go online and find out what it really is. Trust me; it isn’t that at all. You sit on a bicycle until you’re almost dead, and then it stops. And I signed up for this class somewhat unwittingly, arrived only to discover that there were eight of us in the class; the other seven participants were ladies. And that wouldn’t have been so bad were it not for the fact that they all seemed to be doing far better than me. And only pride kept me on the bicycle to the end of the class. I couldn’t allow this lady who looked to be about sixty-five years of age pedal faster than me for forty minutes.

But I mention that only because of what happened at the beginning of the class. And that was that when the class commenced, the lights dimmed in the gymnasium, the music began, and the instructor in the class began to talk. And she said to us immediately, “Now, close your eyes,” which I thought was rather dangerous in the first instance, in case some of us fell off the bicycles. But anyway, we were to close our eyes, and then she said, “Now, allow the music to begin to fill you. Can you feel the bass drum and the bass guitar in your sternum? And allow this music to take you over.” And then, as we were all apparently taken over by the music, she said, “And see yourself. See yourself. Can you see yourself?” she said. And then she said, “And it is all about you.” “It’s all about you.”

Well, I wanted to shout out in the class immediately, but I thought I might fall off the bicycle and disrupt everything, and so I had just to suck it up. But I thought, “Well, this is a microcosm of our society. This is simply an expression of what people are fed on a daily basis—that the whole of our existence starts with us, that it is all about me.” So when that is true in the culture, it will be increasingly true when you form church families out of people who come from that culture, unless we are instructed and guided by the countercultural emphasis of the Bible itself, which turns everything on its head.

Now, I’ve told before that when we conjugate Hebrew, the verb to be in Hebrew, it is the reverse of what it is in English. In English it is I am, you are, he is. In Hebrew it is he is, you are, I am. And so it is that if we are to live the Christian life effectively, we need to think Hebraically, if you like, concerning the nature of our relationship first to God and then to one another. And until that actually is galvanized in our thinking, then we will continue to read our Bibles on a purely experimental and individualistic basis, asking the question always about me, about me, about me.

Now, you will notice that James is not talking about the me of the individual or the I of the individual, but he is talking in the terms of mutuality calling on “the elders of the church”—that is, God’s family—and so on. And having given the exhortation to the elders as to what they should do in these circumstances, he now comes, in verse 16, to let it be known that this privilege of prayer does not fall simply to those who are in leadership but, indeed, falls both as a privilege and a responsibility to all who are in the congregation. And so he says, “Therefore, in light of what I’ve been telling you about coming and asking for prayer and seeking God in faith, I want you,” he says, verse 16, “to confess your sins to each other, to pray for each other so that you may be healed,” and then he goes on from there.

An Exhortation

Well, first of all, notice that in that first half of verse 16, he gives us an exhortation. An exhortation. It is very clear: “I want you to confess your sins to each other, and I want you to pray for each other.”

It’s not easy to pray for each other. I mean, we’ve been offered the little booklet today to pray for the missionary family. And some of us take it and have it in our Bibles and forget that it’s even there. I can do that very, very easily. Consistently! And then I have to do a big sort of gathering, collective prayer on about the twenty-ninth of the month: “O Lord, I’m sorry I didn’t pray for them for the last twenty-eight days, but you know who they all are, and please bless them,” and so on. It’s not very good. It’s all very honest, but it’s not very good. Because it isn’t easy. And the reason it isn’t easy is because the Evil One is opposed to our going to God in prayer. Because he actually knows what we often fail to register, and that is that somehow, in the mystery of God’s purposes, prayer is directly linked to his activity. And so Satan fears realistically the prayers of God’s people.

And when I find it difficult to know how to pray for others, I look to those who are better at praying than me. I read the prayers of others in history. I read the prayers of the New Testament. And I discover as I do so that it helps me to be able to think sensibly about the kind of things that I can ask God for in relationship to the other members of our church family.

So, for example, Colossians chapter 1. Here’s one of Paul’s prayers: “For this reason,” he says, “since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God…” Now listen to the things he’s asking for: “to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we’re praying this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord, may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you might have endurance and patience and so that you might joyfully give thanks to the Father, who has done this wonderful thing in qualifying you to share the inheritance of the saints in light.”[7] You see how helpful that is? Now, there’s nothing illegitimate about that. It just seems to me to be eminently sensible. We do not know how to pray.

The disciples themselves were honest with Jesus, weren’t they? “Lord, would you teach us how to pray?”[8] And so he gave them a model prayer.[9]

Well, perhaps that’s enough on that.

Because James in his exhortation says not only that they are to speak to God on each other’s behalf, but you will notice he says that they are to be humble and honest with each other concerning their sins: “Confess[ing] your sins to each other … pray[ing] for each other so that you may be healed.” Now, what he has in mind are probably offenses against one another—the kind of offenses and sins which spoil relationships and inevitably hinder prayer.

Now, you will notice—and I want to underscore it for you—that there is a tight connection here between confession and prayer. Indeed, we might go so far as to say that the purpose of the confessing of our sins is in order that we might “pray for each other.”

Dangers to Avoid

Now, I highlight this because there are some dangers to avoid. For example, if we’re going to listen to someone confess sins to us, if we’re going to listen to the faults of others, how are we to do that? How are we to do it in a way that is proper, if you like?

If our ears need to be trained by the Spirit of God, our lips, in confession, need to be guided by the Spirit of God.

Well, let me suggest to you that the only way to listen to someone confess their faults or their sins to you is to do so with a deliberate, single-minded devotion to turn it into a matter of prayer, so that if someone is honest enough to come and say, “I offended against you in this way,” or whatever it might be, it doesn’t then become something for us to mark up as a notch that we can now use against that individual someday when we say, “Well, I know that you felt that way or you did that towards me; therefore, I can hold it against you.” No, we are to listen in such a way that we might be able to pray to God for one another—“for each other” as it says—and in order that there might be healing and restoration.

Failure to do so will not result in healing; it will result in havoc. It will not result in healing; it will result in havoc. If we do not listen with that ear that turns to prayer, then we may be guilty of listening with some kind of idle, speculative curiosity. We may even be guilty of entering into a form of unhelpful voyeurism. We may use the material shared with us as a basis for gossip. That in turn may produce within the community of faith allegations and slander. If you think I overstate the case, I don’t.

And when we come this evening to the notion of winning back the wanderers, an obvious cross-reference for us is Galatians 6:1. You needn’t turn to it; I’ll quote it for you. But here is how Paul begins his final chapter to the Galatians, in a similar vein to what James does at the end of his letter, as we’ll see tonight: “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently.” And then what does he say? “But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted.” “Watch yourself, or you also may be tempted.”

Do you know how many times in a counseling situation, especially where people are counseling people of the opposite sex, the very sharing of information becomes the opportunity for further sin, either on the part of the sharer or on the part of the listener? I’ve tried my best to forget every instance in which that has been apparent to me in the last twenty-five years as I’ve lived here, but believe me, it has happened time and time and time again. And it speaks to a number of things, which is beyond the province of our concern right now.

There is a danger, then, in the way in which we listen, and there is an equal danger in the way in which we speak. For if our ears need to be trained by the Spirit of God, our lips, in confession, need to be guided by the Spirit of God. And one of the great dangers in the confession of sin is the danger, as strange as it may sound, of exhibitionism. Exhibitionism. There is a perversity about the human heart that, unfettered from the direction of God’s Spirit, can take some kind of strange delight in telling other people bad things that we have done. And indeed, one may have reason to suspect that the reason they do so in such an instance is the hope that we may have an equally bad ear listening to their equally bad voice. And when those two things combine, you have a recipe for absolute disaster.

You see how much is demanded of us in terms of common gumption in the way in which we read and apply the Bible? Thinking sensibly. I’m amazed at how many times men who in their everyday lives exercise clear, rational thinking when it comes to the decisions of business or of engineering or of science or of craftsmanship, whatever it may be, and yet when it comes to the issues of the Bible, somehow or another, they go loopy. Somehow or another, they decide that there is another mechanism that we use when we read this text. No, there isn’t.

The Spirit of God works, and he works through means. And the warning here in this exhortation is that if we’re going to apply this process, we need to test our motives, and we need to trust our relationships. Test the motive in speaking, and trust the relationship. You can’t talk to everybody about everything. You daren’t! Some people, their mouths are like a babbling brook. They’re just waiting for further information to be fed into the stream, and it’s no sooner in the stream than it’s gone downstream. You can’t tell things to those people. You need to look for people who are the Dead Sea: all of the information flows in, but it never comes out the other end. It simply is turned to God in prayer. Or, if you like, to mix analogies, you need the person who is the firewall, that is the person who digs the dirty great ditch and says, “The fire will not jump beyond here. If you tell it to me, together we take it to God, and the matter is finished and done with, and we move on.”

Test your motives, choose your relationships, and trust those you choose.

And finally, in relationship to this, it is a good rule of thumb—and I’ve told you this before—to regard the area of commission as the area of confession. What I simply mean by that is, if we have offended against somebody with our words, and often involving more people than the individual in the hearing of our words, then it is almost always right to go back to that person and to say that we are sorry, that we confess it, that we ask for their forgiveness, and that we perhaps even pray together, and move on.

But it may not be—indeed, I would go as far to say as it probably won’t be—at all helpful to do the same thing with regard to our thoughts. To our words and our actions, yes; to our thoughts, no. Now, you’re sensible people; you can work this out. To confess sinful thoughts to God is always right. To confess them to each other is almost always not right, in my humble estimation. Now, you say, “Well, you probably have a self-interest in this.” Well, I may, actually, in some way that I’m not prepared even fully to acknowledge. But it is a quite devastating experience as a pastor to have somebody unearth this kind of confession passage, and then they want to come and tell you all the bad thoughts they’ve ever had about you. Please don’t tell me them. Confess them to God. Because that’s what I’m doing with all the bad thoughts I’ve had about you. So fair is fair, right?

What possible benefit is there for me to come and tell you things that I have thought that are perverse, that are unkind, that are unwise, and that may actually be untrue? Tell me one benefit in that. There isn’t a benefit in it. The area of commission should be the area of confession. In my thought life, which God knows and I know, to God I go. If I offend against you in my words or in my actions, I will come to you, and you should come to me. And it is in that context that we can expect healing to take place.

“Confess your sins to each other … pray for each other so that you may be healed.” Whether he has spiritual or physical healing in mind here we can’t say with any great authority. You know that from our study three weeks ago in the evening, when everybody just sat staring at me like donkeys looking over a wall. I wasn’t at all surprised. But anyway, I think the cross-reference—and we’ll move on from this—is Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount: “If you[’re] offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. [And] first go and be reconciled to your brother; [and] then come and offer your gift.”[10]

Dislocation of relationship with God, confession restores it; dislocation of relationship with one another, confession and intercession restores it. So it goes dislocation, confession, intercession, restoration. But if dislocation leads to repression rather than acknowledgment, then you create another whole set of circumstances that will eventually just jump up and bite you.

An Observation

Well, that’s the exhortation in 16a. We go now to the observation in 16b.

“Confess your sins to each other … pray for each other so that you may be healed.” And here’s the observation, in a sentence: “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” If, like me, you were brought up with the King James Version, you know this verse, or this half of the verse, as “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” Sounds very serious, doesn’t it? It actually is serious. “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” The NIV gives it as “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”

Now, who is this “righteous man”? Well, we needn’t go back all the way through this. We’ve tried to identify ourselves in 1:18, and we’ve sung about it at least twice this morning, haven’t we? “His wounds have paid my ransom.”[11] This is the individual who recognizes that there is no way that our attempts at righteous living, or good living, will be able to avail us a welcome into God’s eternal presence. Therefore, we’re just in a dire position—unless, of course, someone would come and live and keep God’s law in perfection and that that same person would then pay the penalty of the offenses of those who are unable to keep God’s law.

And that, of course, is the story of the gospel in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ as a ransom for our sins, as the one who takes our debt upon himself, that we might enjoy all the benefits of his righteousness. Hence our song: “In royal robes I don’t deserve, I live to serve your majesty.”[12] Covered over in a righteousness that God provides. This is the individual whose prayers are powerful and effective. The person who’s put in a right relationship with God will reveal that right relationship with God in a number of ways, and many of those ways have been entertained, and we have followed them through, in the practicalities of James. We don’t go back to them now.

God’s plans in the world include our prayers.

The righteous man or woman, because they read the Bible and love the Bible, will strive to avoid all known sin. Remember, the psalmist also prays, “Cleanse me from my hidden faults and my unknown stuff.”[13] But the righteous individual avoids all known sin, because they realize what the psalmist wrote:

If I had cherished sin in my heart,
 the Lord would not have listened;
but God has surely listened
 and heard my voice in prayer.”[14]

Notice that: “If I had cherished sin…” “Cherish” is a wonderful verb. It’s seldom, if ever, used in public conversation. It’s still used in some of the marriage services, where we talk about cherishing our spouse. But the idea of cherishing something is not simply to have it around; it is to focus on it. It is to be devoted to it. It is, if you like, to have a very nice toffee in your mouth and to eat it really slowly and to move it all around the places in your mouth and just going, “Man! This is a fantastic toffee, you know? I don’t want to finish this toffee. I am cherishing this toffee!”

Now, you remember, we dealt with the double-minded man or woman earlier in the thing: “Yet the double-minded man receives nothing from the Lord.”[15] Why is that? Because they’re double-minded. You can’t ask God to forgive you from a sin that you’re cherishing in your heart. “O, forgive me for this. (Can’t wait to do it again.) Forgive me. (I’m going to try that again.) Forgive me.” The hypocrite can leave their sin and love it. The holy person leaves their sin and loathes it. And it is the righteous individual who is learning to keep short accounts with sin and that sin with one another—hence the confessing of our faults to one another. And this individual’s prayers are “powerful and effective.” These individuals know they can come to God directly. They know that they may come intimately. They know that they must come humbly. They know that they’re able to come expectantly.

Now, prayer is a vast subject, and it is not time for a discourse on it. But let me just give you one or two thoughts to stimulate your thinking as we move to our final point.

Thought number one is simply this: that God’s plans in the world include our prayers. If we go wrong there, we’ll never pray. If our view of God’s providence or God’s sovereignty suggests to us that prayer is an irrelevance, then we will never engage in prayer. But somehow or another, in the mystery of God’s purposes, he includes the prayers of his people in the accomplishing of his will.

He commands prayer, and he moves our hearts to seek him in prayer. The Bible speaks of how God is both the inspirer and the hearer of our prayers. He doesn’t ask us to pray so that he might discover what we need, because remember, Jesus told his disciples, “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”[16] “Oh,” says someone, “well, that’s just what I’m talking about. If he knows, why would I ask him?” Well, are you a parent? The fact that you know certain things about your children’s expectation doesn’t diminish in any way the legitimacy of their ask or the tremendous delight that is attached to it insofar as you as a father, recognizing their expectation of you, is able to respond.

Because, you see, our prayers speak of dependence. Of dependence. That is why the selfism, which is the pagan god of America in the twenty-first century… The pagan god of the twenty-first century in America is self. Self: “It’s all about me. The answer is in me; if I only look in properly, I’ll be able to find it. God is his creation. I am part of creation. Therefore, I am part of God. Therefore, I am ipso facto somehow or another a little god in my own right.” The Bible stands against that at every point and says that the creator of the universe with whom we have to do stands outside of his creation, and it is to him that we are accountable, and it is upon him that we are dependent. Every breath that we take, every move that we make is directly related to him.

And that’s why it is dependence that gives voice to our prayers. That’s why the children—and you’ll see them all around in the hall here today, you’ll hear them. And every so often you hear a little voice that says, “Daddy, help! Daddy, my shoe! Daddy, help!” The Spirit of God comes and lives in our hearts and enables us to cry, “Abba, Father.”[17]

The reason we don’t just talk about God as someone or something or as a cosmic power is because we’ve been made new people. Before we became Christians, God was something or someone, way up there. But now, when we were “included in Christ,”[18] when we believed the Word of Truth, when we accepted his gift of salvation, suddenly God became accessible to us. God became known to us. And we’re quite prepared to say, “I depend upon him entirely.”

And that same God delights in his children coming to him. He delights in it! Again, Jesus said this. You remember, he said, “Which of you fathers, if your son asked for a fish, would give him a snake? Or he asks for an egg, would give him a stone?”[19] He comes down for his breakfast, and you’re there on duty—this is a realm of which I’m unaware, but anyway, we’ll continue the illustration—and you’re there on duty, and you say, “What would you like?” And he said, “I’d like a boiled egg.” So you give him a bowl of cereal, a glass of orange juice, and just a stone in the egg cup, and just put it there. Who would do that? No one would do that.

And then Jesus says, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good things to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to them that ask him?”[20]—somehow or another, as if God is there, in some way unwilling to bestow his blessings and his benefits upon his children. He loves it! He’s not commanding prayer as an irrelevancy. He’s not asking us to come and share our needs with him in some strange way. No!

“Well,” you say, “give me a definition.” Well, I say I can’t give you a definition. It’s hard. Let me give you a quote from Derek Prime, though, that might help us as we come to our final point. He says,

There are times when God wants us to persist in praying for something so that we assure ourselves of our own earnestness and keep ourselves available to become part of God’s answer to our own prayers. I’m thinking here of the conversion of close relatives and friends.

There are other areas of concern where to persist in praying about them indicates a lack of confidence in God rather than a confidence in Him. The distinction between the two probably has something to do with whether or not I’m asking God for something which is for my own personal advantage, or something which I know God plainly wants for others. If I’m asking God for something for myself, which I know may or may not be His will, then to continue to ask Him for this same thing may well be inappropriate. Knowing He has heard my prayer, I may trust Him to do what’s best. On the other hand, if I’m praying for the conversion of others, for those whom the Father has given to His Son as a fruit of Calvary, then I’m right to continue in my asking until I see God’s answer, for in some mysterious way my praying, together with that of others, has a place in the unseen spiritual battle that goes on for men’s souls. I seldom if ever in this life know what place my prayers may have, but I do know that when I pray I have the privilege of opening the resources of heaven to those for whom I pray.[21]

Seven thirty Saturday morning, I welcome you to come as we open heaven’s doors, as we pray for the conversion of greater Cleveland, as we pray for the conversion and restoration of some who once lived with us and walked with us, as we pray in order that we might seek to win back the wanderers, as we will discover in our final session this evening.

An Illustration

Well, there is an exhortation there in 16a. There’s an observation in 16b. And 17 and 18 gives us an illustration. Our time has gone. I’m going to have to just give this to you in outline form and trust that you will actually do your homework.

Look at what it says here: “Elijah…” “Elijah was a man just like us.” That is very striking. Because anyone who knows anything about the Bible knows, in one sense, Elijah really wasn’t just like us. Elijah was Elijah. He was the daddy of all prophets. When Jesus takes his disciples onto the Mount of Transfiguration, who’s there? Moses and Elijah. When John the Baptist steps on the stage of human history, who do they think it is? Elijah reappearing. When Jesus cries from the cross, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”[22] they, some of them, thought that he was calling for Elijah! And James says, “Elijah was a man just like us.”

The word in Greek is homoiopathḕs. Homoiopathḕs. Sounds like homeopathic, doesn’t it? Homeopathic. That’s exactly where we get our word. He was the same in nature. He was the same in emotions. He was the same in his liability to weaknesses. And if you go, for homework, and read 1 Kings 17, 18, and 19, it will be time well spent. And you will discover that he had his ups, as when he took on the prophets of Baal and gave them a real dusting,[23] and he had his downs when after that he was chased by Jezebel, and he went and he hid under a broom tree.[24]

Oh! It’s so encouraging, isn’t it? He who could take on these prophets and say to them, “Why don’t you call on your gods some more? Maybe they’re in the bathroom or something. I don’t know what’s happening.”[25] And then, eventually, he turns to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he says, “O God, glorify your name before these people.”[26] And then, within a relatively short time, he’s bought into the “me” generation: “I’m the only person left in Israel. I’m the only one that’s doing anything good. I’m so tired. I’m so sick of this. I don’t wanna to be a prophet anymore.”[27]

“Elijah was a man just like us.” Now, why does he say that? Because of what he goes on to say. He says, “And he prayed that it wouldn’t rain, and it didn’t rain for three and a half years. And he prayed again, and then it started raining.” “A man just like us.” How are we to make sense of it all?

Well, first of all, notice that when he prayed, he prayed in earnest, that he prayed with God’s glory and honor in view, that he prayed according to his understanding of God’s will. And when you read your homework, you will discover the significance of 1 Kings 17:1 and 1 Kings 18:1: that somehow, in the mystery of God’s purposes, the cries of Elijah to God were directly in line with the will of God in relationship to his judgment over a three-and-a-half-year period on the people. So in other words, it wasn’t some outlandish thing that Elijah did: “Oh, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t I pray that it won’t rain for three and a half years?” “What are you talking about? Where do you come up with that stuff, Elijah?” No. It was within the framework of God’s revelation.

That’s why it is always vital that we allow our Bibles to direct and undergird and frame our prayers, so that what is revealed in the Bible as a promise we can pray for with absolute certainty. Right? “If anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask God, and he will give to him without finding fault.”[28] So I can ask God for wisdom. He promised it. It’s God’s will that we should be holy. It’s God’s will that we should be thankful and joyful and so on. Therefore, we can ask God with absolute certainty concerning these things, and we can pray these things for one another. But when there is no clear command or promise in Scripture, then all we’re able to do is acknowledge that we must pray, “If it is your will.” “If it is your will.”

“I’ve read my Bible, and I don’t think this is in any way a sin. I don’t think it’s a violation of anything. I don’t know whether I’m supposed to live in Cleveland or to live in Glasgow. I don’t know whether I’m supposed to marry her or stay single. I’m not sure if I should change this job. I don’t know whether to hire him,” or whatever it is, “and I’m asking you for wisdom in relationship to this. But in terms of the specific decision, I’ve nowhere to go except to ask you for your help. And I’m about to make a decision, and I pray that I might do so in your will.”

It is always vital that we allow our Bibles to direct and undergird and frame our prayers.

And in my experience, most of my discoveries of God’s will have been found not prospectively but retrospectively, looking over my shoulder and seeing again the amazing way in which God has chosen to take all the eventualities and apparent inconsequentialities of life and mold them together in order to fulfill his purposes.

Well, let’s just pause and pray together.

Just a moment of silent prayer. And some of us may want to cry out to God and say, “I am the blind person. I am the dead person. I didn’t know that I could have a fresh start. I didn’t know that you made people new. But I confess to you that that’s exactly what I need.”

God hears the prayers of the penitent. He hears us when we ask him to forgive us. Some of us need to be honest enough to say that our prayer life is frankly a manifold shambles—that if the missionary family depended on us, there’s no saying where they would be. And we want to ask you, Lord, to help us to be more diligent and more consistent in our prayers. Forgive us for wanting to tell things wrongly. Forgive us when we want to listen perversely. Come and abide with your church, Lord Jesus Christ, we pray. You are the head of the church. You are our advocate with the Father.

And now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all evermore. Amen.

[1] See John 3:1–12.

[2] See Ephesians 2:1; Colossians 2:13.

[3] John 1:1 (NIV 1984).

[4] John 1:4 (NIV 1984).

[5] James 1:18 (NIV 1984).

[6] Ephesians 1:13 (NIV 1984).

[7] Colossians 1:9–12 (paraphrased).

[8] Luke 11:1 (paraphrased).

[9] See Luke 11:2–4.

[10] Matthew 5:23–24 (NIV 1984).

[11] Stuart Townend, “How Deep the Father’s Love” (1995).

[12] Jarrod Cooper, “King of Kings” (1996).

[13] Psalm 19:12 (paraphrased).

[14] Psalm 66:18–19 (NIV 1984).

[15] James 1:7 (paraphrased).

[16] Matthew 6:8 (NIV 1984).

[17] See Galatians 4:6.

[18] Ephesians 1:13 (NIV 1984).

[19] Luke 11:11–12 (paraphrased).

[20] Luke 11:13 (paraphrased).

[21] Derek Prime, Practical Prayer: The How and Why of Prayer (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1985), 20–21.

[22] Matthew 27:46 (NIV 1984).

[23] See 1 Kings 18:16–46.

[24] See 1 Kings 19:3–4.

[25] 1 Kings 18:27 (paraphrased).

[26] 1 Kings 18:36–37 (paraphrased).

[27] 1 Kings 19:10, 14 (paraphrased).

[28] James 1:5 (paraphrased).