Sermon Tone Analysis

Sermon delivered by Pastor Finn on Sunday, August 18, 2019 PENT 10

The Mayo Clinic Proceedings once published a report on prayer.

The report was based on a study of patients with heart disease.

Five people prayed for half of all the study’s 799 patients at least once a day.

After six months, researchers found no significant differences between those who prayed for and those who weren’t.

According to the leaders of the study, prayer is not effective at all.

Martin Luther once defined prayer in the simplest of terms when he said in his Small Catechism, “that we may ask Him as dear children ask their Father in heaven.”

But since when do we measure the effectiveness of prayer based just on whether or not we obtain exactly what we were praying for, like just to get better when we’re sick?

What a medical study can’t measure are all the spiritual effects we know prayer has, like how God is using this or that situation in life to lead us back in faith to his promises.

It can’t measure the confident feeling in your heart when you turn things over to God in prayer, or to know people are praying for you.

What a study like that can’t measure are all the spiritual effects we know prayer has, like

What a study like that can’t measure are all the spiritual effects we know prayer has, like

Today we’re going to learn more about something that you won’t be able to find out in any medical or psychological journal, but that you can find out in the Bible, and that’s how prayers work.

How does prayer work?

What kind of prayers are effective, and what kind of prayers aren’t effective?

how prayers are effective.

First, let’s remember what prayer is.

Simply defined, Martin Luther explained prayer in his Small Catechism this way: “that we may ask Him as dear children ask their Father in heaven.”

Ever wonder about that?

Simply defined, Martin Luther explained prayer in his Small Catechism this way: “that we may ask Him as dear children ask their Father in heaven.”

Martin Luther once defined prayer in the simplest of terms when he said in his Small Catechism, “that we may ask Him as dear children ask their Father in heaven.”

In simple terms prayer is speaking to God, in our own words, that we make up, or by borrowing words from another, like we do when we use a prayer book or when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, or praying the psalms in the Bible.

Prayer.

In some ways it’s one of the easiest things for a Christian to do.

At the same time, we speak of struggling with God in prayer, turning things over and over in our mind as we pray, wondering if we’re asking for the right thing, struggling to come up with the right words, worrying that we’re asking too much, or asking for the wrong things, or even if God’s accepting our prayers in the first place, because we’re so aware of our sins.

Feeling far away from God you might even feel like you can’t pray anymore or have forgotten how to pray.

Praying.

In some ways it’s one of the easiest things for a Christian to do.

Even a little child prays.

It’s as natural for a child of God to speak to our heavenly Father as for an earthly child to run to Daddy.

In his epistle James gives some examples of prayer when he asks, (vv.13-14) “Is anyone among you suffering?

Let him pray.

Is anyone cheerful?

Let him sing praise.

Is anyone among you sick?

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

These are examples of situations in which we might, and ways we pray—there are prayers of supplication when we ask God for help with things, like when we are sick.

There are other kinds of prayers in which we’re praise God for things he’s done and blessings we’ve received.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version.

(2016).

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Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

13 Is anyone among you suffering?

Let him pray.

Is anyone cheerful?

Let him sing praise.

14 Is anyone among you sick?

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

Even a little child prays.

It’s as natural for a child of God to speak to our heavenly Father as for an earthly child to run to Daddy

As easy as you would think it is to pray, it can also be one of the hardest things to do.

Or someone “Why even pray in the first place?”

Doesn’t God already know what he’s going to do?!

What difference does it even make if God’s will is done anyway?

Shouldn’t I be busy doing stuff instead of wasting time on prayer?

Would God even listen to someone like me in the first place?

Our sinful mind comes up with all kinds of thoughts and doubts that make it a struggle to pray.

Praying.

I struggle with it.

It’s one of the hardest parts of my Christian life.

Why pray?

God already knows what he’s going to do.

Shouldn’t I be busy doing stuff?

Why pray?

God wouldn’t listen to someone like me, would he?

Why pray?

See how my rationalizing and doubting make it such a struggle.

Or perhaps prayer inspired and informed by faith (and gets its information from God’s Word).

It’s the kind of prayer only a person of faith can pray.

Which is why it’s so helpful here to have James tell us what kind of prayer works and why.

First, James says, God answers the (v.15) “prayer of faith.”

So what does James mean by a “prayer of faith?”

There are a few different possibilities but they all hover around the same idea of faith.

There’s the prayer of a person of faith.

And by “person of faith” we’re not speaking in the politically-correct spirit of our times that label all religious people, “people of faith,” whether it’s the Christian faith, or the Jewish faith, or Hindu or Muslim faith.

The Bible clearly states there is only one name given under heaven by which we must be saved, the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Without faith in Jesus it is impossible to please God.

And so by prayer of faith here, James is referring to the prayer that flows from true faith in Jesus.

He’s describing the prayer of the person who knows by faith that he’s righteous and holy in God’s sight through the blood of Jesus who opens the way to God in prayer for us by his cross and empty tomb!

We can think of the “prayer of faith” as prayer that’s informed by the faith and understanding you have in mind when you pray because you understand and believe what God’s Word says.

Faith is worked in us by God’s Word.

In his Word the Spirit gives us conviction to pray at God’s invitation, knowing that He wouldn’t command us to pray in the first place if He didn’t intend to answer our prayers.

What makes prayer effective?

When James describes the “prayer of faith” as effective, it’s because of the strength of our faith.

Rather, it’s because of the One that person of faith prays to.

James gives a number of examples to help us.

(vv.13-15) “Is anyone among you suffering?

Let him pray.

Is anyone cheerful?

Let him sing praise.

v.14 Is anyone among you sick?

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

v.15 “And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up.”

So what’s James describing here with “anointing with oil” and the “prayer of faith?”

Is that what makes prayer effective—an elaborate approach that incorporates the use of oils like you see sometimes in the case of faith-healers down south or in some Pentecostal churches today?!

(Sometimes the Bible does describe miraculous healing in the early church, but he isn’t prescribing something for ALL times in EVERY age of the church.

If that was it we might be equipping our elders a little differently these days with little traveling cases of oil to do faith healings!

God didn’t promise that, and that’s not what’s being prescribed here either.

Churches that do faith healings ignore the Letter of Corinthians that says those things would fade away over time as God’s church became more established and all of the God’s Word was finally writen down and available to all.

What’s described here might have been a miracle but it could also be describing something medicinal and soothing like the therapies Hospice Care might sometimes incorporate into their care to alleviate soreness and irritation, but again, James isn’t prescribing something here for the Church in EVERY age).

What does James say?

makes it effective like this? James is saying