Healing for the Sick
James 5:14-16a
When the Lord Jesus walked on this earth in a physical body, He was interested in the needs of people. Everywhere Jesus went, He went about doing good and He went about touching the lives of people where they hurt.
He went about forgiving their sins. He went about relieving the deep fears and emotional turmoil of their life, and He also healed people of their physical illnesses. He went about preaching and teaching, and the Bible says that He went about healing all manner of sickness and disease among them.
The church is the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus does through His spiritual body on the earth today the kinds of things He did when He was walking on this earth in a physical body. The church of the Lord Jesus is also to be interested in the needs of people.
When people come to a church which bears the name of the Lord Jesus, they should expect their needs to be met. A church meets needs in a variety of ways. Of course, our number one ministry is to meet the spiritual needs of people, to tell people about the cross where Jesus died so that they might be forgiven of their sins, so that they might have the peace of God which passes all understanding, so they can learn to grow in grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and learn about that wonderful place called heaven to which they will go one day. So we meet the spiritual needs of people.
We also meet the emotional needs of people. When people get saved, they come into the Christian life with much of the baggage of the old life. Though the Lord forgives you of your sins, some of those hang ups and some of that emotional baggage you bring into your life as a believer are still there. For many people it takes a period of years to work through some of these emotional issues.
We believe that the words of the hymn writer are certainly true when it says, "Down in the human heart crushed by the tempter, feelings lie buried that grace can restore." Thank God for the church's ministry to emotional needs.
But also we believe that we have a responsibility to meet physical needs on the part of people. We have a ministry to the bereaved, and we have a ministry to those who are sick. We have one the finest hospital pastors you will ever meet in your life. Bro. Jimmy does a wonderful job of visiting in the hospitals and praying for the sick.
We also have some wonderful doctors and nursed in our congregation, and we love you and thank God for the wonderful ministry you have. Sometimes God chooses to minister and to work through these dedicated and consecrated people in the ministry of physical needs.
But the church also has a ministry of healing for the sick, those who are sick with physical ailments. The Bible has a great deal to say about the whole subject of healing.
As I indicated, the Lord Jesus healed people who were sick. You read about the lives of the apostles, and you will find that they healed people who were sick.
Before we look at these verses of Scripture, I want to lay for you the Bible grid on the subject of healing so we will understand. The first thing I want to say to you is that sometimes Christians do get sick.
Notice in verse 14 he says specifically, "Is any sick among you?" He is talking about believers. Christians do get sick. You will read in the Bible about Christians who get sick. Some of you have been sick. I think we have more sickness in recent days than I have ever seen in a congregation in my ministry. A lot of people have been sick. So Christians do get sick.
The second thing I want you to know from the Bible teaching on healing is that all sickness is due to original sin. My wording is very careful here. All sickness is due to original sin. In Romans 5, verse 12, it says, "Wherefore, as by one man," talking about Adam, "sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned." Because of the entrance of sin into the world, sickness and death have also come into the world so that ultimately all sickness is due to original sin.
The third thing I want to say in introduction is to say to you that not all sickness is due to personal sin. It is not always true that when people are sick they are sick because there is sin in their life.
In John 9 the disciples spoke to Jesus about the man who was born blind. They said to Jesus, "Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus replied and said to them, "Neither this man nor his parents. He is not sick because of anything they have done but that the glory of God might be made manifest in them." All sickness is not due to personal sin.
But then the next thing I want you to understand is that sometimes sickness is due to personal sin. There was a man who was sick of the palsy, and they brought this man to the Lord Jesus, and in Mark 2, verse 5, it says, "When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee."
Then you may recall the man who was a cripple at
the pool of Bethesda. The Bible says that the Lord healed this man who was crippled. Jesus said, "Sin no more lest a worse thing come upon you." So though all sin is due to original sin, and not every sickness is because of personal sin, it is true that sometimes there is sickness because of personal sin.
With that in mind, I want us to look at these verses because these verses are the clearest verses in all of the Bible which have to do with the church's ministry for the sick. Follow carefully this outline as I lay it before you.
I. A Sick Christian.
First of all I want you to see in these verses a sick Christian. "Is any sick among you?" Here is an indication of someone who is a believer and they are sick. They have some kind of ailment.
They have some kind of physical sickness that has come upon them. We do know, as I have indicated before, that sometimes Christians do get sick.
We don’t have the details; we don’t know what the problem is, but here is an instance of a sick Christian. Here is a sick Christian and this Christian is in need of healing.
Secondly I want you to notice in these verses of scriptures that there is
II. A Special Call.
Here is a believer who is sick and it says, "Let him call for the elders of the church." I don't think that means every time you have a little sniffle that you are suppose to call. I don't think that means that every time you get sick you are to call the church and ask for somebody to come visit with you. It is a special call. It is a time of special need.
As we see in just a little while that there is an indication here that here is a believer who is sick because of some sin in their life. They have sinned and now they are sick and they have the need to call for the house of God, for the people of God to come.
By the way, I want you to notice in passing here too that it is the responsibility of the sick person to make the call not the responsibility of the pastor to have mysterious powers of insight and to have a crystal ball and know where they are sick. Some people get sick and they hide it from everybody; and if the church doesn't find out about it, they get their feelings hurt and they run off and move their letter somewhere else.
"I was sick and nobody came to see me." It may be that you didn't call and ask anybody to come to see you.
"Is any sick among you? Let him call. It is the responsibility of the sick person to call and ask for a visit.
It says "Let him call for the elders of the church."
When a person is sick, "Let him call for the elders," plural, "of the church." Here is a specific need. Here is a sick Christian. Here is a special call. This is an instance where they feel that special prayer is needed concerning healing in this matter of sickness.
I want you to notice the procedure that is laid out in these verses. I won't go into detail. It says to call for the elders of the church. Evidently, this is to be a home visit. It says first of all, "Let them pray over him."
I want you to depict the scene in your mind for just a moment. Use your imagination. Here is a sick Christian. Evidently he is sick because of some sin in his life. He has come to the recognition and understanding that he needs spiritual care and he needs spiritual prayer. He has asked for the elders and the elders have come and they are gathered around him and they are praying over him. We'll see just how they are praying in just a moment.
Then you will notice that it says, "Anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord." This, of course, is a matter of scripture that has been given a variety of interpretations.
It is an aorist participle in the Greek text here which indicates, "Having anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord." Pray over him, having anointing him with oil.
There are two words in the Greek language for oil. There is one Greek word, chrio, where we get our noun Christos, which is the title for the Lord Jesus, Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the Christ. It means the anointed one. So to anoint someone with oil in that sense was a chrio. It was an anointing that set apart a person for a special ministry.
Kings were anointed. Prophets were anointed and priests were anointed. It was a royal ceremony. It was a special ceremony. Of course, our Lord Jesus is the King of kings. He is the Priests of priests and He is indeed the prophet of all prophets.
So there is the word chrio that is used. But there is another Greek word that is used for oil. It is the Greek word elaion. It is a word that was used in medical terminology.
For instance, remember the parable that Jesus told about the man who was coming down on his way to Jericho? The Bible says that he fell among thieves. You will recall the Good Samaritan came along, and the Bible says that he bound his wounds pouring in oil and wine. The indication is by the use of that word of oil used for medicinal purposes.
If you study the literature of the time and secular Greek writings in that time and you hear elaion, anointing with oil and oil itself, being referred to as the best of all medicines. It was known as the antibiotic of the ancient world.
It was used medicinally.
The word which is used in this particular passage is the word elaion that makes reference to medical means. The indication here is that when a person is sick what they do is they pray but they also make use of medical means. Any time anybody is healed who is sick, God has done the healing, but sometimes God heals in answer to specific prayer. On other occasions God chooses to heal through the use of medical means and the use of medicines.
When I get sick I'll tell you what I do. I pray that God will heal me and I call my doctor. If he sends me a prescription for a medicine, I go get that medicine filled and I start taking that medicine. What difference does it make if you get well that way or get well the other way? It really doesn't matter.
If you prefer to use this as a symbol of the Holy Spirit as some do, I have no argument with you. But personally I believe what he is saying here is that when people get sick, there are two sources of healing. There is the source of prayer as we ask God to heal, and there is the source of medicine and medical means which God has given people the ability to use and to develop.
Here is a person who is sick. They are praying over him. They have anointed him with oil in the name of the Lord, recognizing that it is the Lord that brings healing in that situation as well.
Then I want you to jump down to the latter part of verse 15 and notice something else that is involved in the mix of this procedure.
It says, "And if he has committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another." Here is an indication that there is some sin involved, that there is some sin which is the precipitating cause of the sickness in this situation.
It says, "If he have committed sin, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults," notice this, not to an individual on a one way street but, "Confess your faults one to another." It brings up the whole matter of confession of sin.
Confession of sin is an area that has been greatly abused. Sometimes people have confessed sins in such a way that it has brought great reproach on the name of the Lord. Let me give you a guideline in the whole area of confession that I think will be helpful to you. Never confess a sin beyond the circle of its influence. I want to repeat that because this is very important. Never confess a sin beyond the circle of its influence.
Let me show you what I'm talking about. In Psalm 90, verse 8, it says, "Thou has set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance." There are some sins in our life that are secret. There are some sins in your life, like your thought life, that evil thought you had this morning, that are known only to you and God. Those sins are to be confessed only to God. Secret sins confessed only to God. Do not confess a sin beyond its sphere of influence.
There are some sins that are private, sins that have been committed between you and another individual.
That's why Jesus says that if your brother sins against you, you are to go and tell your brother between you and him alone. It is a private sin. If he knows about it; don't confess something that he may not know. If you have committed a sin against that individual and he doesn't know you have committed that sin, then don't confess it to him.
Don't confess a sin beyond its sphere of influence. Don't hang out your dirty laundry in public.
I have heard about some of these confession meetings where people confess all kinds of gruesome and grotesque sins. There are private sins and private confession.
But there are instances where people need to confess their sins to those to whom they have sinned and against those they have sinned. I believe that there are some Christians who could get well if they would just get right with God and have an old-fashioned mourner's bench experience.
Then it says in verse 15, "And the prayer of faith shall save the sick."
It is very particular in the terminology here. "The" prayer proceeding from faith. I don't think this is a prayer that can be prayed on every occasion. I think this is a prayer which God creates in the heart of an individual. I believe it is a prayer which is birthed in the heart of God and deposited in the heart of the believer. There are some instances when people are sick and they ask us to pray for them, and God seems to create in our heart a prayer of faith that God will heal and that God will touch that individual.
I believe in faith healing. I'm just dubious of some of these faith healers. I don't find Jesus doing anything like some of these faith healers do. The faith healing business today has been turned into a racket and a money making proposition. I see poor, helpless, needy people come to some of these faith healers and they don't get healed and they walk away and their lives are wrecked psychologically and emotionally because they didn't get healed, and the impression is given that you didn't get healed because you didn't have enough faith.
That's not what the Bible says. The Bible says, "The prayer of faith shall heal the sick," but notice the distinction: It is not the faith of the sick person but the faith of the person who's doing the praying.
And by the way, it's not always God's plan for somebody to be well. It is not always God's plan for somebody to be healed. When people give false hopes and when people tell other people that if you just have enough faith you can get healed, they do great damage to some of the sweetest people in the world.
I can’t help but think of Marilyn Davis and how she told me she would have never been what she was spiritually if it had not been for what she was physically.
It was not God's plan. God had another plan in her life. It is the prayer of faith that will save the sick. And it can only be the prayer of faith when it is the plan and purpose of God for people to be healed; then they will be healed. Do you believe God heals people? Of course, I believe God heals people.
Let me ask you a question. How many of you have ever gotten sick? How many of you got well? See what I'm saying? Most of the time it's God's will to heal people. But sometimes God has another plan. Sometimes God works through these times of sickness and these difficult times of diseases and God is just doing something in their life that we do not understand. It is in the realm of mystery.
Then we see
III. A Splendid Cure.
It says in these verses, "Pray one for another, that ye may be healed. Then in verse 15 it says, "And the Lord shall raise him up."
When God heals you, then give God the glory. When God does the healing work in your life, take the days remaining that He has given to you and live those days for the honor and the glory of God.
In closing I want to say to you that there is one sickness that is the worst of all sicknesses. It is sin sickness. In Isaiah 53, verse 5, it says, "But he was wounded for our transgressions." He's talking about sin. "He was bruised for our iniquities." He's talking about sin. "The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed." Healed from what? We are healed from sin.
First Peter 2, verse 24, says, "Who his own self bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed." You were healed from your sin problem.
The greatest problem of all, the greatest disease of all is the sin problem and the sin disease.
You remember when Jesus said to that man, "Son, your sins be forgiven thee"? Somebody said, "Who can forgive sins but God?" Jesus said, "That you might know that the Son of man has power on earth to forgive sins," He said, "'Rise, take up your bed and walk.'" What Jesus was saying is, "I'm going to do what you can see on the outside so you will know what I can do on the inside." The same Jesus who can heal your physical body is the Jesus who can heal your soul of sin sickness. When He does it, it's a miracle indeed.
I heard about a little boy who had been ugly to his mother. He was feeling sorry and repentant of it. His mother had one of those little slates on the refrigerator where you could write notes and then erase them. The little boy wrote on the chalk board, "Dear Mom, I'm sorry I was ugly. If you forgive me, then wipe this out." Of course, you know she did.
When you confess your sins to Jesus and ask Him to forgive you, He does. He doesn't rub it in. He rubs it out.
Let's bow our heads in prayer.
