How do we respond when we are suffering? Do we complain, lash out in anger? Do we withdraw and become depressed? Or do we turn our attention away from our temporary difficulty and instead gaze heavenward, seeking the face and the purpose of God in the midst of our suffering? Welcome back to Light of the Word Radio. Suffering is a universal aspect of life on this planet. As human beings, suffering is just part of the landscape of our lives. This is because of the sin that entered into the world through the rebellion of our first father Adam. His refusal to obey God brought consequences upon us all that will remain for as long as the earth orbits the sun and the stars shine in the heavens. But the scripture teaches us that our suffering is something that God uses for his glory in our lives. And that glory is best when we actively seek to live it out. There is no escaping our suffering, but we can live in such a way that our suffering becomes a blessing rather than a curse. This week, Pastor Jim begins a sermon titled, Are You Suffering Tonight? And the answer to that question becomes all the more pressing as we consider just how to respond to the suffering that will surely visit every life. So let's join Pastor Jim and consider just how our suffering can be a blessing. James 5 beginning in the 13th verse. Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call 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 sin, 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. Father, Lord, I lift up to you the reading of your word. Father, I ask that you would use me today to bring glory to your holy name, that you would use me, Lord, to reveal you through your scripture, that you would use me, Father, that much be made of you, and that that would carry throughout this congregation, that would carry throughout those who hear, And that not only would much be made of you, Lord, but that your name would be on the tongues as a sweet praise to each person who hears this message. For your glory and your glory alone, in the name of Christ Jesus. Is anyone among you suffering? What kind of suffering do you suppose it's talking about? Could it be sickness, maybe? Do we suffer when we're sick? Sometimes. Depends on what the illness is, right? Could it be bereavement? Could it be grieving, mourning for something or somebody? Could it mean disappointment? Have you ever suffered through disappointment? Or have you always lived lives that nothing ever disappointed you? Okay, probably none of us there. Could it mean persecutions? We probably do not face physical persecution yet, though that day seems to be drawing closer and closer here in this country. But we do face an emotional or a mental persecution, don't we? Could it mean loss of health, or property, or any number of other things? I think all of those, don't you? I mean, there's so many things that cause us to suffer. And suffer takes on many different degrees. I have met people who could continue on doing what they do, and doing it at a high level, even though they suffer from something. And I've met other people who are just the opposite end of that. The slightest suffering, and they come apart. But what he says here, Is anyone among you suffering? He doesn't waste any time. It's not on the next line. It's not in the next paragraph. He says, let him pray. This text today is about prayer. It is about being a people who pray, being a Christian who follows after our Lord Jesus Christ in prayer. So if you're suffering, if you have something going on that is bringing you down, from where you should be and could be, pray. You ever wonder? Why Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days before he prayed? You ever wondered that? You ever thought about that? Three days he's in there and then he remembered the Lord and prayed. But how about us? What do we get into? What kind of troubles come on us? What kind of suffering comes on us? And how long do we go before we pray? Have you ever had something going on for hours or days, weeks, maybe longer? And you think, well, why haven't I prayed? Why? Why don't we immediately, when something is happening in our life, make the Lord the very first one we go to? But instead, we are hammering out ways to overcome it ourselves before going to the Lord. Jesus makes it very clear. Let Him pray. He goes on to say in this same sentence, is anyone cheerful? Or is anyone filled with joy? Is anyone happy? Is anyone lifted up? Now think about it for a minute. Those who he was writing to, especially as we've gone through this epistle of James, they were suffering some stuff, weren't they? They had all sorts of different places that persecution was coming on them, all different types of persecution. They were outcast. And he says, is anyone cheerful? And our first inclination would be, how are you cheerful in the middle of that? But it's amazing how Paul found joy even in prison. As I always like to say, he didn't find joy in being in prison. He found joy while he was in prison because his joy was in Christ. So as anyone, lift it up. If you are, let him sing praise. Now, what's the difference between singing a praise and praying? What are they? They're the same thing, aren't they? Isn't singing praises to God, isn't that a form of prayer? It's a form of thanksgiving. It's a form of showing your joy in Him. But then again, here we are. We find these times of happiness and joy, and you know how hard it is to think of God in the middle of that joy? It's actually easier to think of Him first in the suffering than it is in the joy, isn't it? When things are going good, there seems to be less need for Him. So James is addressing these believing Jews, and he's telling them, pray. Pray in all circumstances is really what he's saying, isn't it? When you're down, pray. When you're up, praise Him, which is a prayer, which is praying. Make much of God no matter what's going on in your life. And folks, I tell you, through these days we have in 2020, we need to remember that, don't we? Don't we need to remember to go to God first and often? We need to remember that He is our joy, and in Him we find satisfaction, even in suffering. Now, I say that, and I think of 2 Corinthians 12, 8. The apostle Paul has been praying to the Lord. He says that, in verse 8, he says, "...three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me." What is this? Well, we know, right? It's the thorn in his side. Whatever the thorn in his side was, whether it was a person or whether it was an illness, whatever it was, after he prayed three times, God gave him an answer, didn't He? Did God say, okay, I'm going to heal you? No. God said, for you, my grace is sufficient. In fact, God went on from there and he said, in your weakness, I am seen strong. So Paul says, well, then I will boast of my weakness so that you will be glorified. Folks, this is what we do with suffering. Suffering that does not mold and shape us more in the image of Christ has no value. And let me ask you, do you really want suffering that doesn't have any value? If you have to suffer, don't you want it to have value to it? If you are going outside and working hard in the heat, don't you want something to come back to you for that hard work? We've been working in our garden here and there. We want some vegetables to come out of that garden. We want something to show for our labors. We've worked in the flower garden a little bit. We want there to be beauty in those flowers. If you're out there working, mowing lawns for a living, then you're doing it for a return of a paycheck. Do we really want to do suffering for no purpose? Let's take that to Him and turn that suffering, no matter what it is, into joy. A story I love to tell was way back. 18 years ago, I was up at the hospital in Manhattan, Kansas. There was a woman there. I was with her and her family as she was dying. And there was such darkness all around. I mean, darkness so thick you could cut it. There was absolutely no joy. And I would leave that room from time to time and I'd go straight across the hall. And in the room across the hall was the wife of a Nazarene preacher. That room had the shades pulled back, the lights were on, there was singing, there was praising God, there was reading of Scripture, and there was joy as she was dying. Same circumstances, completely different results. What's the difference? He said, Lord, the difference is in Christ. In Psalm 119, verse 67, it says, Psalm 119, verse 71 says, And then the same Psalm, Psalm 119, verse 75, that your rules are righteous, and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me." When you are suffering and going through something, do you think about the fact that God is molding you? Or do we focus so much on the issue that we miss the lesson? Brothers and sisters, I pray that you will focus on God in your suffering, because you are going to suffer. You will have things that bring you down. I don't care who you are. I don't care how much money you have or how much money you don't have. I don't care how much family you have or how much family you don't have. You will have times that bring you down. And you suffer. Let that be a time of drawing close to God. He gives us that opportunity. All we have to do is use it. On to the 14th verse. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call the elders of the church. Let them pray over him. anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord." Well, I must say, this verse here caused me many extra hours of studying this week. Because I did as I always do, I prepare my message, and then I listen to quality preachers on the same text to see what I missed. And one preacher that I trust As much as I trust any preacher in what he speaks, completely countered dictates what I had to say on that verse. And so I had to stop and say, okay, why do he and I see something completely different? What is it that I'm not seeing or that he's not seeing? I've never found a preacher yet or a Christian yet that I 100% agree with everything. My wife and I can't 100% agree on everything in the scripture. It certainly doesn't happen with anyone outside of my house. He said that this verse is not about those who are physically sick, period. So I went and I listened several more times to his message, actually listened and read through it. I went several more times through mine and the material I had to support what I was saying. And I came to this conclusion, that what he has to say is probably right, except for the exclusivity of it being only spiritual. I believe this, like many things in the Scriptures, has both a physical and a spiritual meaning. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call the elders of the church." We need to call the elders. I was reading through some commentaries. I read through about 25 commentaries on this particular verse. In fact, I read through commentaries I'd never even heard of before, but I found them online. And as I started reading them, I realized very quickly they were not some willy-nilly thing. You know, those you can pick out pretty fast and stop reading. But this particular commentary addressed both sides of it. He talked about how it is both spiritual and physical. But he said with the physical, he said if a pastor or an elder of a church hears that someone is sick, he has as great a responsibility to go to that sick person as that sick person has to let him know so that he can come to him. It's important for us to lift up the sick, isn't it? It's important for us when somebody has an illness that we go to them. It is important for us when they are down in this way that we pray for them. Calling the elders does not mean that the elders have a better connection to God than you do. If the elders have a better connection to God than you do, that is because you are not surrendering yourself to God. It's as simple as that. Now, the elders typically should be more learned and more consistent. But a saved person in a right fellowship with God has the same power as anyone else. For just a second, I'll drop down to verse 17. We'll go back to 17 here shortly. We're just people, right? Pastor, an elder, any other church member, a Sunday school teacher. We are just people. And God has given us all equally the opportunity to come to Him. So we know that when it says to call the elders in, it's not saying because they have a better prayer life than you. Though that sometimes might be the case. But that's not what it's talking about. It's talking about us coming together and encouraging and lifting up before God this person. Sometimes when we are really sick and we've had something that's been going on for a while, we get to that place where we get tired or just stop praying. We get too weary to pray. You ever been there? How about with sin? Sometimes we have a pet sin. I call them pet sin. A pet sin is one that we hate to love. It's something that we continue to do. A pet sin is something that we don't want to do, but we keep going back to it. And we pray after we have committed that sin, we pray and we say, oh, Lord, forgive me. And he does. But after we've done that for the 37th time, we start to think, why would he forgive me now? We begin to put limits on how much forgiveness God has for us. And so we become too weary to pray because of our sin. So there are times when when our weariness, whether in illness or whatever, cause us to need someone to come alongside us to pray, isn't it? It's also scriptural throughout the scriptures, throughout the New Testament, that we would pray for each other, isn't it? Don't we hear that often, that we pray for each other? So James is not making something up. He is not coming up with something that is out of the ordinary. This is what he has seen. as the brother of Jesus. This is what he has seen with the brothers of Christ and the sisters. Some people take this text for healing ministries, and I have an issue with healing ministries. I have a major issue. First off, I'm of the opinion that God still heals, okay? If somebody is sick and we pray over them and it be God's will, that person will be well. I have seen people with things that seemed hopeless be turned completely around because of prayer and the will of God. What I do not believe is that we can change the will of God and heal somebody ourselves. Or that we can call on the name of God as if we are plugging into some power and touch somebody to heal them. I don't believe that. What I do believe is that when we pray over somebody, we seek out God's will. We want what God wants. And it is not always God's desire to heal somebody. We go back to that same verse in 2 Corinthians from Paul. It was not God's will for Paul to be healed. of this thorn in his side. Does everybody here, or most of you here, know who Johnny Erickson Tada is? Johnny, when she was, I think, 17, graduated high school, she was ready to go into the mission field, she was out on the lake, she was in a boat, she dove off the boat into shallow water and broke her neck and has been handicapped ever since. When this first happened, if you listen to her story, if you read her story, she was angry. Can you imagine? Paralyzed for life and angry. Did that help her any? She and family members started going to faith healers, and she couldn't understand why the faith healers would never pick her, never choose her. She gets a description of one particular event that she went to, and there was a number of other people similar to her, different types of handicaps, but desperate. And she said that they were all in one area together. They were put together in this one area. And she said she saw the disappointment on the faces of every one of them. The same disappointment she had in her heart as not one of them was chosen to be healed. Folks, if somebody wants you to give them something to heal you, run. Because that is a charlatan. That is a false prophet. That is a liar. If they really had the gift of laying hands on and healing somebody that came from God, then they would have God's Spirit. And if they had God's Spirit, the place for them would be at the hospital, don't you think? Where else could they go that they could put that gift of God to full use? But instead, they go off to the TVs and the radios and they tell you, you send them this and you will receive healing. And then when you don't, it was your fault because you did not believe enough. You didn't have enough faith. This is what they use to justify that, these particular verses. There is no justification for that. There is no justification. That is pure evil. to give somebody hope, and then to snatch that hope to say they didn't have faith. How much faith did Jesus say it took to move mountains? The size of a mustard seed, right? This mustard seed is very small, but grows into a great tree or vine. Mustard Seed Faith. It's a powerful picture. Jesus said that the mustard seed is the smallest seed in the garden, but when it's grown, it makes a tree so big that the birds make their home in its branches. This tiny amount of faith is all that is needed to be healed by God when that healing is His will for us. And the required insignificant amount of faith is something that is given to all who are called out as God's chosen people, because He always provides what He requires. So rather than allowing some liar to convince you that your faith is too small and you cannot be healed, or changed, or relieved, rather than believing that your circumstances are something that God would change if only He could, rather than believing that God's ability is somehow limited by you, Instead, dare to consider the biblical position that if you are suffering, it is the will of God for your life right now, and seek to understand just what God is using that suffering to produce in you. The truth of all of our lives is this, we live in the hand of a sovereign God, whether we believe it or not. So the best course of action for us in times of suffering is to run to that God and seek to draw as close to Him as possible. waiting upon His pleasure for our need, and trusting Him in the meantime. You see, there is no safer place than in the center of God's will for us, and no safer destination than that which God intends us to go, no matter how difficult the journey might prove to be. Today I would like to address a question that has come in. This question is, Why is John MacArthur making such a big deal out of meeting in person at the church? This is a very important question for us. And I'll start out by saying that if you are not a Christian, I put this in as many ways as I can. If you are not born again, if you are not saved, if you do not belong to Jesus Christ, if you do not have the Spirit of God dwelling within you, then this will not make much sense to you. You will have that same question, why would somebody make so much of meeting together? But if you belong to God, if you are saved, if you are born again, then you have a great desire within you to gather together with the believers. God has placed that in you and it is a great desire within each one of us. So very quickly, I'd like to address this question and give you a few reasons why it is important and it is essential. First off, the church is God's idea. God is the one who established it. One of the verses I go to with that is Matthew 16, verse 18. He says, I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. When he says, on this rock, I believe that the rock that he is talking about is the rock of the foundation or the statement that Peter has just made. Remember, this is where Jesus had asked, who do people say I am? And then he asked, who do you say I am? And Peter replied that you are the Christ, you are the Son of God. And that is the rock, that is the foundation of the church. But it says here, and these are Jesus' words, I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. Folks, we live in a time when the gates of Hades are beating, beating on the door of the church, trying to close it down, trying to stop us from worshiping God. You see, the enemy of God, he doesn't want God to receive worship. He doesn't want God to be made much of. He was trying to steal that away. In fact, that's what the scriptures tell us the devil came to do, is to steal away. This is established, the church is established, and the meeting together is established by God Himself. Also, God instructs us to. In Hebrews, we see that in Hebrews 10, verses 24 and 25. And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another. And all the more, as you see the day drawing near, we're not to forsake the gathering together. And some say, well, we gather together in small groups. Well, we gather together with the body, with the local body. And some of those local bodies, in fact, 90% of the local bodies across this nation, the local churches are are under 200. I think 80% are under 100. But whatever size that body is, we gather together for the worship to make much of God. And when we do that, we are honoring Him. Another reason is so that we can grow spiritually. It is the teaching and preaching of the Word of God that helps us to grow. And we need to hear that and do that in person, because not only is it the hearing of it, but it is the fellowship in the hearing of the Word of God. One verse I'd like to read to you here is Ephesians 4, verse 14. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves. and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people and their deceitful schemes. Friends, we need to gather together to encourage each other in the Word of God and to help each other through error. Some say, well, the church is for the new Christian, the immature Christian. No, the church is for everyone. Everyone needs to hear the gospel over and over. The gospel is for the saved. The gospel is for the lost. The gospel is for the new Christian. The gospel is for the old Christian. It's for everybody. In our gathering together, we encourage each other into what is right. So I encourage you. to find a local church if you don't have one, and get involved in the teaching of God's Word. Get involved in being part of the worship. Another reason in that gathering together is also the new Christian, the young Christian, the person who has not been Christian long, they need the example in the body of those who are strong, those who have grown in maturity and are growing in sanctification. They need you to be a part of their lives. And finally, as we gather together in the church, it allows us to be an outlet, be sent, so to speak, into evangelism. We're familiar with the Great Commission. It says, Therefore go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. Now friends, I just call upon you to make this church important to you, to make the worship important to you. Thank you very much. We want to thank you for joining us today. If you've been blessed by this message or have questions about the content or about our ministry, if you have need of counsel or guidance or want us to pray for you, please reach out and let us know. We can be reached in many different ways. We can be called toll free at 800-416-9352. That number once again is 800-416-9352. You can find us on the web at www.lightofthewordradio.com. Once more, that's www.lightofthewordradio.com. Or you can reach us by mail at Light of the Word Radio, PO Box 1, St. George, Kansas, 66535. 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We hope that you will join us next time on Light of the Word Radio. Until then, I'm Pastor Eugene. And on behalf of all of us here at Light of the Word Radio, thanks. And may God bless you and bless the hearing of His Word.