And turning your Bibles first to the book of 1 Kings, 1 Kings chapter 17 is where we will begin. 1 Kings 17, and we'll read verses 1 through 7, and we will then Go to the next chapter, to chapter 18, before coming to our text today in the book of James. 1 Kings 17, beginning at verse 1, the congregation hear the word of the Lord. And Elijah the Tishbite of the inhabitants of Gilead said to Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel lives before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years except at my word. Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, Get away from here and turn eastward and hide by the brook Kerit, which flows into the Jordan, and it shall be that you shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there. So he went and did according to the word of the Lord, for he went and stayed by the brook Kirit, which flows into the Jordan. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. And it happened after a while that the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land. Now turn to chapter 18, the next chapter, to verse 41. We'll read verses 41 through 46. Chapter 18, beginning at verse 41 through the end of the chapter. Then Elijah said to Ahab, go up, eat and drink, for there is the sound of abundance of rain. So Ahab went up to eat and drink, and Elijah went up to the top of Carmel. Then he bowed down on the ground and put his face between his knees and said to his servant, go up now, look toward the sea. So he went up and looked and said, there is nothing. Seven times he said, go again. And it came to pass the seventh time that he said, there is a cloud as small as a man's hand rising out of the sea. So he said, go up, say to Ahab, prepare your chariot and go down before the rain stops you. Now it happened in the meantime that the sky became black with clouds and wind and there was heavy rain. So Ahab rode away and went to Jezreel and the hand of the Lord came upon Elijah and he girded up his loins and ran ahead of Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel. And the reading there at verse 46. And now turn to the book of James to our text today. Book of James chapter 5 verses 16 through 18. Here again the word of the Lord. Confess your trespasses to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Elijah was a man with nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit." Again, we end the reading there at verse 18. This is the word of the Lord, and if you have heard it and received it as God's word, then say with me now, amen. You may be seated. Now let us pray once more. Father, we do ask that you would have mercy upon our poor souls, that you would enlighten our dimmed eyes, that you would take this word that has been read and planted deep into our being. May it bear much fruit. May we understand it rightly. May we practice what is taught here rightly. Now we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Sometimes to ask the question is to answer it, and certainly that is true with the question I'm about to ask you. That is, have you ever been discouraged in your Christian walk in life? I think to be a Christian is to answer that question in the affirmative. So much of the New Testament, so much of the Bible, but the New Testament in particular is about dealing with those kinds of discouragements. We see how the Apostle Paul dealt with discouragements and trials, and we saw how the church in general dealed with discouragements and trials, and we have so many exhortations in the scriptures on how to deal with discouragements and trials. What we have before us today in the text, in the book of James, some more of that kind of instruction. Now you may not have thought about it so much that way as you have read it over the years or maybe even just now. But within the context here of James at the end, and certainly over the last chapter or so, James, as I mentioned last week, is dealing with how we deal with trials and problems and controversies and all the things that are part of the Christian life. And again, as we saw last Lord's Day, there were three particular exhortations to prayer. Well, I could have easily said three more exhortations to prayer here because, in fact, it's along the same lines. But the discouragement that James is concerned about here is not so much the discouragements that come from the trials that we may have day by day, particularly, or the kinds of things that he had spoken of before, but it's discouragement in prayer more particularly. That is, when he comes down to it, And he's encouraging us to behave in a certain way, to live our lives as Christians in a certain way, in the light of a greater underlying truth. And that truth is expressed in the illustration of the life of Elijah. Now, we're going to get there in a moment, but let's begin here at verse 16. Now, we're not going to have another tour of the sausage factory today, but there's going to be a little bit of it, just a little bit. Because here, especially at the end of James, James starts to flex his grammatical and vocabulary muscles a little bit. And so there are some distinctions that have to be made. So I hope you'll be patient with me and I hope also that it is edifying. So let's look here particularly at this first exhortation, imperative as it is, a command, confess. your trespasses, or as you may see there, your is italicized, confess trespasses to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. So the first exhortation to us in prayer, and especially in the light of discouragements and trials, is to confess your trespasses and pray for one another. Now in particular here, this word confess, something that we know and understand, but it's a somewhat unusual word here in the original. And there's an element here of joy that is associated with this word confess. That is, as a sinner, I might be compelled to confess something. I might be caught in a lie. I might be caught in some other sin, and I might say, It was me, I did it, I said it. But there's no sense of joy in that. In fact, there's no sense of anything but maybe shame if my mind is right, if my heart is right. But here there's a little different shade of meaning and that is the idea here that we do so willingly, we do so in fact rejoicing that we have this great privilege and duty as well, but a privilege with one another to confess our trespasses to one another. Now just so you understand here, this is a continuing action kind of verb in the original. It is something that we don't do only once or, well that was when I was a young Christian or that was in a period of weakness. It's intended to be understood as something that's part of the Christian life. It's part of what we do as just the natural walk, the natural interaction that we have with one another as Christians. Okay, so we willingly and even with an element of joy, even though the confession may be hard, we confess our sins. And this is Another one of these odd words here, and this word is particular, talking about a lapse. That is, maybe you've done something right and you've done something well over the course of many years, and this may be the case more particularly, for example, in the marriage relationship. You've always done it a certain way, you've always behaved in a certain way, and then in a moment of weakness, you don't. And there's a cause of offense, justly so, a cause of an offense. And the idea here is whether it's unintentional or intentional, that's also included here. It can be something that you didn't even mean to do. So let's put these things here together. So the idea here is this continuing, willing, joyful even, confession to one another of those areas and those times when willingly or unwillingly, or I should say intentionally, unintentionally or intentionally, We cause offense, we slide, as this word might indicate, we slide outside of what is normal, what is right, what is good, and we don't do that for one another. And so we're to confess that, we're to speak that, by the way, that is to say the words, to actually, actually say it, and to do this to one another. Now, your trespasses are sort of implied in the one another, right? So let's think about what James is telling us here, that there is this reciprocal action continuing as part of the Christian life of confessing, that is saying the same thing in a sense, although this is a different word, saying that to one another and not to everyone else. See, that's included in that also, right? This is very practical. So, confessing our sins to one another means that if I know that I have offended you, if I know that I have had a lapse, if I know that there's some break in our fellowship here, then I'm to go to you. Now, this ought to sound very familiar for those of you who were here during that long 12, 13 sermons over on forgiveness. You go to that person. You go to that person, you deal with it, you confess to one another. Now, why is that? Why ought we to do this? Well, sometimes the Scripture doesn't give us a why. Sometimes we're told to do something or told to say something and we're not really told explicitly why, but in this particular case, we are told why. We're given that result clause, right? We're told what the intended result is, and that intended result is that you may be healed. That you may be healed. Well, there's that little bit in there that I skipped, isn't there? Confess to one another and pray for one another. Well, who's doing the praying? Well, it sounds to me like both are praying for one another with an intended purpose. That is, when we confess our sins to one another, then our love and our affection for one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, one of the effects of that is that we pray for one another, that we uphold one another. Now, in particular here, This is another unusual word, and it means particularly to desire. It expresses desire. It could even mean to wish for something. But the idea here is that we uphold one another with this desire for one another, lifting one another up in prayer. That is, it's not so much praying for myself, Well, that certainly could be part of this, but you're praying, you are praying both for yourself and for the other person. Now, is it possible to pray a prayer that is acceptable before God, that is glorifying to God? Is it possible to pray for someone? for their good, for their growth in Christ, for their maturity in the faith. Is it possible to do that for someone when you harbor bitterness in your heart towards them? I would really like to see—no, I don't want to see that. I don't think that's possible. See, that's why these things are put in here together, and it's for a very practical reason, confessing and praying for one another so that you may be healed. That is, and here particularly, it means in this manner, so that in this manner you're healed. See, the act, the very act of confessing your trespasses, confessing these times when you create the problem, whatever it is, intentionally or unintentionally, you confess it, you pray for one another. By that means, the healing comes. That is, things are made whole. The part that was missing is restored. The relationship that was bruised, the relationship that was broken, perhaps, is mended. It's necessarily so, but you'll notice, again, this is in a particular tense. It's reflected there by the wording that you may be healed. Now it is a certain thing that if we follow the scriptures, if we follow according to what God has told us, He will fulfill what He has told us He would fulfill. It is possible that in our relationships with one another that the healing may not come. I believe the scriptures here are teaching that if we do this, if we confess our sins to one another, we pray for one another, the healing will come. But it is possible the healing will not come. And the healing may not come if we do not do this. See, that's the strength here. That's the power of the way that it's phrased. It is possible for these wounds to fester. It's possible for the relationships to continue to be broken. And if they're broken, they get worse and worse and worse and worse until it seems as though it's almost unrecoverable. You see, when we acknowledge our sins, when we repent of them, we confess them before one another, when we seek mutual forgiveness, we seek this reconciliation, that's how everything is healed. Now, this is not talking about physical healing. That was last week. That was the last text. This is a different kind of healing. In fact, the word is different here. That is, it's the restoration, more particularly, of relationships. Now, of course, within this is also included the unwritten, though understood, obligation to forgive. That is, if there is one that comes to you confessing their trespasses to you, saying that I have done this, and they don't mitigate it, they don't try to weasel out of it and say that they have done this, then you, brothers and sisters, then you have the obligation to forgive because Christ has forgiven you. Now, that's just the first part of verse 16. We're told to pray for one another, but we're also told that we're to pray with a certain expectation. That is, we're to pray with a hopeful confidence. That's what we find here in the second half of verse 16. Now this is where things go really a little bit crazy, especially in the original. If you've ever looked at this particular verse trying to figure out what the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much means, and you sought other translations, I suspect you were greatly disappointed. That's because this is an extremely difficult phrase to translate. So if you'll be patient here, I want to unpack this because As one commentator notes, to say the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much is sort of a nonsensical, sort of circular way of saying whatever is trying to be said. By definition, an effectual prayer avails much. So what exactly is being said here? Well, I'll try to unravel this as best as I can. So in the original here, to give you some idea here, if I can give you a literal wooden translation here, much avails or much availing, if you will, the prayer of a righteous man working or operating. That's what the original says. So there's a lot of stuff that we need to deal with as far as adding words to make it make sense in English. Well, part of this is found in how these words work together. The idea that is presented to us here is that there is There are a couple of words that go together, and those words that go together are very powerful or very strong, and those are the first words that we find in the text, and that's important in the Greek. First words generally mean these are the things that are emphasized. So this idea of something being very strong or greatly powerful, that's the idea, first of all. That is, those one complements the other. One is an adjective that modifies the other. Very, very strong. Extremely strong, we could say. Well, what is it that is extremely strong? What is very powerful? Well, grammatically here, we have the word prayer. Or in particular here, this word for prayer means the expression of need, expressing a need for something. It is a supplication, if you will. It's a request. That is, we are asking God to do something. We're asking God to answer our prayer in a particular way. So, again, very powerful a prayer here. We're taking this bit by bit. Well, what kind of prayer? Well, the kind of prayer that we're talking about is the prayer of a righteous person, a righteous person. And don't stumble over this, because you might say, well, I know I'm not righteous. I know that I'm a sinner. I know that I am weak. I know that I struggle even with what has just been said. I struggle with confessing my sins. I struggle with acknowledging that I'm a sinner sometimes, that my pride wells up. I'm going to touch on this in a moment. The idea here, again, grammatically, is of this righteous person. Okay, that's reflected in most translations of a righteous man, being a very literal translation, but it means righteous person. Now, the next thing we find is this idea of something being operative, something that expresses the power. Now, in particular here, this idea is a continuing action verb, participle, actually, if I want to show you some of the sausage making here. And in particular, that is, the idea of something that has this power within itself. That is, that it has this inner working. So the idea here is that when a righteous person prays, when a righteous person asks God for something, that in that prayer of that person there is great power, there is a great influence, if you will, or we could understand this to be that there is a great spiritual effect when the righteous person prays. Now, when I said a righteous person, of course we're talking about someone who is in Christ righteous, one who has the righteousness of Christ imputed to them. But there's also part of this which also means, and that's objectively true, but there's also part of this in a subjective sense. That is, if we're living in a profane way, if we're living lives that are contrary to God's word, if we're sinning wantonly, and then we come to God and we ask, well, God, I want you to act. I want you to do this. Will you hear me? Well, of course, we have to deal with the sins. We have to deal with the faults first, even if it's faults with one another. So there's an element of which both the objective and the subjective are true. The idea here is that when this righteous man prays that there is an inner working both in the righteous person and by extension the prayer that he prays. So if your prayer is limp, if it's lifeless, if it's a form, if it's merely just the words that you say, See, that is not a fervent prayer. That's not, as a lot of translations put it, that's not the kind of prayer that God hears, not the kind that He will answer. You might say, Pastor, well, sometimes it's hard to pray. And my answer to you to that is, yeah, I know. Sometimes it's hard to pray. Sometimes our hearts seem cold. It seems like all the things in the world intrude upon our thoughts and our meditations and our prayers. And sometimes it seems as though that God doesn't hear us. It seems as though that the prayers are bouncing off the ceiling. It seems as though that the promise that's expressed here isn't actually realized in our lives. Even if we are one who has embraced the Lord Jesus Christ, even if we're the one who claimed His blood, even if we're the one who loves to call upon God, how can it be that when I pray that the promise here is that in the fervency of my prayer and the honesty of my prayer that God moves and acts, even ways unseen. And especially, what if I just don't sense that in myself? Well, James anticipates this. I believe, he anticipates this and he wants you to pray with hopeful confidence. He wants you to pray knowing that God hears your prayer, even if sometimes your prayers are weak, even if sometimes you struggle, even if sometimes the trials seem to intrude upon your spiritual life. And so he exhorts you to pray earnestly. And that's what verses 17 and 18 tell us, to pray earnestly, just like Elijah prayed. Now, look at what he says about Elijah here. He says, Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. Actually, I like the way the old King James puts it, like passions. That's a very good translation here. He's driven by the same things that you and I are. You think about Elijah. Elijah is one of the great prophets. Who was it that appeared before, who appeared with Christ at the transfiguration that we read in the book of Luke? Well, one of them was Elijah. The other one was Moses. The law and the prophets. He's the paragon of the prophet. He is one of those prophets, one of those unique prophets, Elijah and then Elisha, through whom God worked miracles, worked mightily through Elijah. He had an extraordinary ministry in an extraordinary time. And yet, what does James say? He doesn't say, well, look at Elijah. He was such a great man. Oh, look at him. He was such a powerful prophet. He says, no, he was just like you. He had the same passions. He had the same drives. He had the same struggles. See, this is so important for us to come to grips with. See, as I read there in 1 Kings 17-18, what did we read about? Well, we read that he stood up before Ahab, this powerful king. Ahab was an extremely powerful king and an extremely wicked one. He stood up before him and what did he say? He was bold before Ahab. He says, as God has said, before whom I stand, it is not going to rain until I pray that it's going to rain. And then what does Elijah do? He takes off. Heads for the hills. Because he knows what the implications of his message is. The gospel, if you will, that he preached before Ahab was a gospel of judgment. It wasn't a gospel in that sense. It wasn't good news, it was bad news. And so he takes off. And then what happens when we find that he takes off? God comes to him and promises him, says, I will provide for you. Myself, I'm not sure I would be all that excited with eating after what the birds bring to me and so on. But if I'm hungry, I suppose I'm going to eat it. And God was faithful, right? He provided for Elijah as he went out into the wilderness. He fed him twice a day. He placed him next to a brook so that he would have water to drink and everything seemed fine until the effects of the drought happened. See, that's one of these great ironies here, isn't it? That Elijah tells Ahab, it's not going to rain for about three and a half years. Oh, well, Elijah also lives in the land, right? He also drinks the water. And the water dries up. And then he has to flee again. Well, you see, Elijah was a man with fears. He was a man with weakness. And in fact, he despaired of his life. So what does that mean to you? What does that mean to me? Well, what it means to you, what it means to me is that we ought to consider the life of Elijah. Because what did he do? Well, when he told Ahab that it wasn't going to rain, he mentions in a In a Hebrew kind of way, he mentions that it's because, he mentions that he stands before God, that is, that he prays, that he's speaking to God and God is speaking to him. And he gives this promise, he gives this promise that he has received. In a sense, he expresses this as, that this is the effect of his prayer, that it's not going to rain. And yet we know, underneath it all, with Elijah, there was a sense of fear, there was a sense of trepidation. He was unsure of himself. So what do we learn? Well, we learn, first of all, that sometimes, sometimes our heart is troubled. Sometimes we do struggle with praying. Sometimes we do struggle with this relationship that we have with a God who works in ways that are mysterious to us. even when he answers prayers. So what do you think Elijah thought while he was sitting there watching that brook get smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller, and pretty soon it was gone? Do you think perhaps his faith was tried? Do you think perhaps he wondered if, in fact, everything was happening the way that God really intended for it to happen? See, that ought to be encouraging to you that someone as notable, someone as great as Elijah, that by the word of his prayer, God moved. But you also notice what happened. He says that he prayed again there in verse 18, and the heaven gave rain and the earth produced its fruit. Think about this. James sort of cuts this, he edits the story for us. But what did we read? He told Ahab, Ahab, it's going to start raining again. You better respond, you better act, it's going to start raining again. Then he went to the top of the mountain to pray for the rain. Now how much of an act of faith do you think that was? To tell the king it's going to start raining, and then you go and you pray for the rain. And then you pray for the rain and you send your servant to go look and there's no rain. It indicates here that he had to pray and pray and pray and pray and pray and pray and pray seven times. That is that the answer did not come right away for Elijah. Now, in the first instance, it did come right away. When he told Ahab it was going to stop raining, it stopped raining. But when he was told, when he was praying for it to resume raining, it didn't happen right away. And this tells us also something that we need to learn from Elijah. Even someone such as Elijah, through whom God worked mightily, sometimes the answer was wait. Or, no, but, we could say. Not yet. Pray again. Pray some more. Now, does this mean that Ahab's prayer was pointless? Well, no, it doesn't mean it was pointless. Does it mean that God didn't hear? No, it doesn't mean that God didn't hear. Does it mean that when God doesn't answer your prayer, that you should give up? Does it mean that when you pray and you pray with the honest and honesty and earnestness of heart, when you call upon the name of the Lord and you don't hear an answer, does that mean that God did not hear? Well, the answer is no, just like Elijah. Sometimes, sometimes the answer is not what we expect or sometimes the answer is delayed. Now there's something else that's going on here in this relation of the example of Elijah, pardon me. That is that the religion of the land, Ahab's religion, was completely contrary to Elijah's. See, Ahab believed that if they used magic, appealed to the bales, made the right sacrifice to the storm god, that the rains would come in their time. Elijah was preaching against this. He was acting against this. He was praying against this. See, there was this expectation in the land that, well, it hasn't rained here for months and months and months. We need to have our fertility sacrifices and do all these things to make it rain. And sure enough, here comes the rain. What do you think that Elijah, it doesn't say, but perhaps Elijah was tempted, maybe, maybe if I hedge my bets, maybe if I just compromise a little bit and maybe do this over here, then maybe the rains will come. Well, we don't know, but I think it's maybe some sanctified speculation that he was tempted, tempted to either give up or tempted to try something else. This is another lesson from Elijah, because it says in verse 18, he prayed again and the heaven gave rain and the earth produced its fruit. That is the God of heaven and earth, the God who controls even the raindrops brought rain when he, in his good pleasure, according to his decree, wanted to bring rain. but also at the call of Elijah. So congregation of the Lord, do you ever get discouraged? Do you get discouraged in your prayers? Maybe you think that the Lord doesn't hear your prayers. Do you think that perhaps sometimes there are relationships that you deal with, troubling, troublesome relationships that you deal with that can't be fixed? Both of these are addressed in the text today. Confess your trespasses to one another, pray for one another so that you may be healed, and also don't lose heart. Don't lose heart when you pray because the Lord does hear, the Lord does love you, the Lord does care for His people, and He knows what you need and will answer in His time. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you for this encouragement to pray, to not lose heart or become discouraged in prayer. We thank you, our Father, that you have promised to hear us. We also thank you that you do not answer according to our foolishness, but you answer according to your wisdom. and that when you answer in the negative, that it is for our good. And when you hear an answer in the way that we ask and expect, that is also for our good, and it is to you that we ought to lift up our praise. We ask that you would encourage us in this, that we would look at someone such as Elijah and take courage and comfort from knowing that he also struggled, and he also prayed, and both are true. I ask that you would now bless us as we continue to worship, and this through Jesus' name. Amen.