SERIES: The Book of James
TEXT: James 5:16-20
MESSAGE: “Two Essentials of a Healthy Church”

James encourages his readers to reflect on two key principles for living in a community:

1. The Power of Prayer (v16 – 18)

“16 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. 17 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. 18 Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.”

“And he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” — 1 Kings 19:4

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow” — Hebrews 13:8

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” — Matthew 6:9-10

2. The Power of Restoration (v19 – 20)

“19 My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, 20 let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.”

“Jesus’s teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren’t appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think.” – Timothy Keller