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This morning, Pastor Waitey concludes our Book of James series with the challenge to confess our sins one to another. The risk of vulnerability is great, but the promise of freedom and healing is greater still. Let's prepare our hearts for the word of the Lord today.

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Church, this morning, uh the title for this sermon is uh closing encouragement. We are looking at the last few verses of James as he encourages us to um to faithful living. But I fear that some might find this sermon not so much encouraging as it is daunting. Yeah, we have just been looking through the book of James, right? And I I feel at least for myself, we have gone through several weeks of the word of God piercing our hearts, right? Uh being admonished by the Lord. Uh and yet this might be the most difficult part of the letter for some. Um but I do believe that as we as we as we hear and as we receive the word of God uh in the closing words of James, there can be much healing, restoration, and edification in our church. But why do I say it's a difficult passage? Because this morning, the passage we are looking at calls us to a greater vulnerability to one another and greater love for one another. And so I've given this sermon the subtitle, We Are Here for One Another. Right? As a church, as a family of God, we are here for one another. Our lives are wrapped up with each other's lives in Christ, and this is something uh that we need to lean on, especially in trying times. Right? In the sermon last week, we were just looking at uh prayer for the suffering, prayer for those who are sick, and today we are looking at prayer for those who are sinning. Right, and James spells out what it means to be a brother or sister to someone struggling with sin. And it boils down to two principles for us this morning. The two main points for us this morning is this confession that is accompanied with prayer, and reclamation, that is to rescue or to win back someone. Confession and reclamation. And we see the first point here, confession in uh verse 16. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. And there are a few ways of reading this verse, right? I think commentators really vary on how exactly to interpret this particular verse, right? Uh, some focus on the word death for, right? Um, and and that means there's a connection to what was said before, which was about the person who is sick, right? Let who let him who is sick ask the elder to come and pray for him. So some look at this as deaf, uh as deaf, as therefore, those who are sick, they must be sick because of a sin in their lives. Right? So they need to come and confess their sins to be prayed for and then to be healed. Um it should be noted that not all sickness is because of sin. Right? Some sickness may be linked to unrepentant sin, but not all sickness is due to sin. Right? Um for the past month, my daughter Sage has been sick. And I mean she has been kind of naughty, lah, but I don't think it's because of her willful sinning against the Lord, right? I think if anything, it is the sin of his father. I think I probably passed her uh something uh in the last uh two weeks. Yeah. So not all sickness is due to sin, but some maybe. And so here James is asking those who are sick, those who still have unrepented sin, go to someone, confess your sin, and pray with one another to be healed. So that's the first way of look uh reading this verse, right? The second way of reading this verse is to uh focus on the word uh conf to confess, right? The word here uh actually means to agree with, agree together with, right? Um and and they see it as a way of saying, go to someone that you had a disagreement with and now say, you know, I agree with you. Right? So if I wrong someone, I go to the some, I go to the parents and say, You are right, I am wrong. Right? So confess to someone who has wronged you. And that's the second way. The third way is actually much more general. People see James starting to generalize his message as he is coming to an end. Right? Um he moves from addressing in the in the third person to the second person. He went from saying, He who is sick, let him call the elders, pray for him, the Lord will raise him up, to saying, therefore confess your sin and pray for one another, that you may be healed. I guess one easy way of trying to resolve this whole thing is to have a fourth option, right? Uh all of the above. Right? And I do think James has all of this in mind, right? He starts from something specific and using as an example to kind of go into what he wants to tell to the whole church. You know, that it is important for all of us to confess our sins. Right? Sins that can cause physical illness, sins that can cause relational brokenness, sins that causes other problems, other issues in our lives. Right? Then the answer to that is to confess our sins and not just to God, right? James tells us to confess to one another. In the 18th century, um, I'm sure you know these two characters, John and Charles Wesley, started meeting regularly with two other friends in Oxford. They were meeting to pray, to study scripture, and to examine their spiritual lives. And they were mocked for being so holy holy, right? Uh I'm sure some of us will have been mocked as well when we were in school, right? The holy holy, the goody two shoes. They were called the holy club. Uh some call them the Bible moths. And and uh funnily enough, uh some call them the Methodists, because they have all these methods and all these rules to kind of follow in order to uh live their Christian life, um, which they later proudly adopted as as their denominational name, right? The Methodists. Yeah, but they were they were called initially they were called the Holy Club, um and and they were meeting together to pray with one another, to to chat with one another, how have you been doing, you know, um, and and one of the things they were doing is they were emphasizing confession of sins to one another, praying for and praying for one another. Right? They were meeting regularly and they were asking, have you have you had any unrepented sin? Is there anything that you want to share today? Right? And from this small group of four people, right, meeting regularly, praying together, studying scripture together, and confessing their sins together, that movement grew. And and John Wesley started to create uh have more and more people, of course, and then to start to form more and more of these small groups that were later called discipleship bands, right? Bands of uh Christians coming together. Um, and the purpose of it was to was to create a setting where James 5.16 could be practiced and lived out, where they could confess their sins with one another and pray for one another. Uh he even came out with these 22 questions as part of uh self-examination. If you just go online and you search it out, you'll see there are there are these 22 questions that um you you don't have to go through every question on the on every single day, right? But it's helpful to once in all just look at it and say, you know, uh I think there are questions like um, have I been been been a hypocrite? Have I been uh projecting a particular image on myself that's not who I am? What is the Bible to me? Is the faith real to me? Uh and and and so on, right? So here's these two 22 questions for people to uh have their self-examination and to confess their sins to one another. And to be honest, I'm sh I'm guessing this whole idea of confession of sins can be off-putting, right? Why would we want to confess our sins to anyone? When was the last time you confessed a sin to someone?

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Maybe to your spouse, to your cell group leader, to someone that you really trust. But when was the last time you confessed your sin to someone?

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We don't want to hear and we don't want to talk about sin. Especially our sins. Especially my deep secrets, right? I don't want to talk about those things. I don't want to be exposed to them. I I don't want to expose them to the world. Can I have the next slide, please? Right? We would rather just kind of live in it, right? To the point that even if the whole house is burning down, we tell ourselves this is fine. Right? We don't want to deal with sin, much less talk to someone about our sin. And we just let it slowly destroy us, whether it's physical destruction or whether it is mental, spiritual. Right? And I think we're living in a spiritual climate and culture where we don't want to mention sin, sin, right? Sin makes people feel icky, right? We don't want people to be uncomfortable. Uh if you come to church today, we want to hear nice things being said about us, we want to hear how much God loves us, how much God will bless us, right? And we want to ignore our shortcomings and our misgivings. And even if we want to confess our sins, surely we can just confess to God. Right? Don't we don't we always confess our sins to God? And so that that's not to say that it is it is not efficacious or it is not enough, right? We are called to confess our sins to God because ultimately sinning is sinning against God. And yet, God has given the church also to the people as a practical means for us to be truly honest with ourselves and with others. And that's why James here says confess your sins to one another, because this is a catalyst for spiritual transformation and healing. Right, confessing our sins to someone may be embarrassing, may be shameful, right? But it is a powerful way of humbling ourselves before God and his people. Laying our sin out in the open so that we may die to it and be free from it. Right? There is power in naming out our sins and confessing it to someone so that we may actually seriously now, honestly now, die to our sin and be free from it. Because often part of the reason, part of the reason why we don't want to share or why we don't confess is because we don't really want to stop. Right? We don't really want to stop. We may confess our sins to God, we pray, God, will you forgive me? Next time I won't do it anymore. But sooner or later it comes back again because we don't really have that conviction to stop. And the terribly difficult but vital thing God wants us to do today is to confess our sins to one another as we are convicted to do so. Right? So that we become committed and accountable to breaking the pattern of sins in our lives. Right? It is like telling someone you want to change your lifestyle, right? Technically, you don't have to announce, hey, well, I feel I feel like tubby now. I think I need to go for a run more regularly, right? Technically, you don't need to announce it, right? But some of us we tell our friends, you know, hey, I'm gonna do this now, right? As a way of saying, hey, keep me accountable. I mean, I'm telling you now so that you will help me along with this journey. Right? And if you have a really good friend, that friend will say, Yes, okay, I will go and run with you also. Right? We'll go along together in your in your um in your in your desire to change your lifestyle, right? So that you don't give into temptation, so that the days when like today were so nice, so rainy and and so so comfortable, right? You don't say say to yourself, yeah, then maybe I just then maybe I just lay around at home and not do anything, right? To keep each other accountable. And so as we confess our sins, right, we are committing ourselves with someone now, with a physical person now, to say we want to sin no more. Yeah, and and then to receive prayer from one another so that we may receive healing. Um, James goes, James goes on to talk about this prayer a little bit. Uh in in the second part of verse 16, he says that the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Right? Um, without going too much into the the whole uh background of this this particular part of the verse, uh I just want to say the righteous person here refers to the one who does the will of God. Right? The righteous person is the one who does the will of God, and it is not that the righteous person has been endowed with special spiritual powers, right? It is not that this person is is almost supernatural in his being, right? But he is the one who knows and does the will of God, and so his prayers work, right? He his prayers are working as he calls on God to act according to God's will. Um and so Jesus uses uh James uses uh the prophet Elijah as a model for us, right? In verses 17 and 18, Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. Very strange thing to say. Uh Elijah is often hailed as one of the greatest prophets in the Old Testament, right? And often we think, wow, he's all the way up there. There's no way we can even touch him, right? There's no way we can be like him. And James here, in this particular context of prayer of the righteous, right? James is saying, Elijah, known in the Jewish world as someone who also uh also prays a lot and prays uh fervently, Elijah is like one of us. His nature is the same as ours, right? And he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit. Um the important part here is that he prayed fervently. In the Hebrew, it literally says, with prayer he prayed. Right? With prayer he prayed, which is repet repetition, which is like like why so extra, right? But it is a Hebrew way of saying he prayed with a lot of intensity, right? With fervency, which is kind of a word that we don't use nowadays, right? With a lot of zeal. Right? He prayed with prayer. And all this is to say God uses human instruments and he uses ordinary people, like you, like Elijah, he uses ordinary people who will do his will. Right? And and our prayer works when we live according to his will for us, when we share God's heart, when we care about the things he cares about. Right? So this is what John says uh in 1 John 5, verse 14. And this is the confidence we have toward him that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. The righteous man who does the will of God, if you ask according to his will, God will hear us. Right? Or in uh or Jesus in John 15, verse 7, if you abide in me and my words abide in you, right? If you stay with Jesus, then whatever you say, whatever you ask, right, it will be done for you. Everything is contingent on God's will for us. Yeah, and so it this becomes actually the core for us as well, right? Uh to be a people who will be righteous in following God's will. And so to pray with prayer, pray with fervency, pray with intensity for God to heal sinners, for God to heal sinners who come to us and confess, uh, who trust us enough to confess their sins to us. Right? Uh, this is a way of saying all of us here, you know, as we confess our sins to one another, so we are called to also live the righteous life so that we may pray with prayer for one another to be healed. And so this is the first way we are here for one another, right? We have one another to confess to, and we receive prayer from one another to be healed, and we trust that the prayer of the righteous person works in besieging God to respond. And that's the first way, confession. The second way is this. Uh, the second way we are here for one another is when we care enough to reclaim or to rescue someone from wandering away. Uh, we see that in the last two verses, right? James begins with a word to indicate that we are truly a family. We're not a bunch of people kind of stuck here or put to just randomly put in this church, right? James says, My brothers, and I by essentially, my sisters, right? We are a family. My brothers, if anyone, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, 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. His last words for us uh is for us to be there for the one who wanders from the truth. And truth is taken in two senses, right? Truth means doctrinal truth, what we believe in, but also um behaviorally, how we live our lives.

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They don't differentiate between belief and practice, right? To them, it is one and the same. So when James says those who are wandering away from the truth, he's saying those who whose lives do not reflect our beliefs nor the way we live our lives. And we see that in Galatians 2, right? But when I saw that their conduct, their way of living, was not in step with the truth, with the belief of the gospel, right? So here the picture is of someone who is straying away from the Christian belief and Christian living to the point of being lost, right? Wandering away from the faith. When we choose to dwell in our sin, we isolate ourselves, right? The more we dwell in it, the more we want other people to be out of our lives. Just let me be, please, just let me be. Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it this way sin demands to have us by ourselves, it withdraws us from the community. And the more isolated we are, the more destructive will be the power of sin over us. And that is what the devil wants at the end of the day to draw us away from the community of believers, away from the faith, away from the beliefs and the way of living, so that we become isolated, alone, and perishing on our own. And here James is saying the impetus is for us to bring this person back.

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And it immediately brings to mind the parable of the lost sheep in Luke chapter 15, verses 4 to 7. Um, which, as a summary, is when uh a shepherd has a hundred sheep and one of them uh wanders off and is lost, and the shepherd leaves his flock to go out into the wilderness and search for that one sheep and bring it, bring the sheep back, and there is great rejoicing. Right? When we reclaim or when we rescue, when we bring back a wandering person, we save him from death and condemnation. But just as we are often hesitant to confess our sins with another person, so we are hesitant to confront others. We are hesitant to be involved in someone else's life, right? And especially being in this very highly uh individualistic world and culture, we we have kind of been conditioned to just care for ourselves, right? Or at the very least, to keep to ourselves, just leave others be. No, don't be so capable, don't go and go and suck into other people's uh problems and business, right? We can coexist, but your business is yours, and I shall not intrude. James this morning shakes us up and tells us to care about the wonder, to care enough to do something to win the person back. Uh 19th century Anglican bishop, J.C. Rose. Rai once said, the highest form of selfishness is a man who's content to go to heaven alone. The highest form of selfishness is a man who's content to go to heaven alone. The apostle Paul himself says something really, really extreme, and I'm not sure if any of us, myself included, are ready to say something like this. In Romans 9, verse 2, he says this, for I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen, according to the flesh. He cared so much about his fellow Jews that he says, I'd rather be the accursed one so that they can come to Christ. Do we care about our family wandering away?

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In our biological family, we would be so anxious and so worried, right? If our own brother or sister, our own son or daughter, our mother or our father wanders away. And this and God caused us to treat each other this way, right? We are a family of Christ. And the way, the second way for us to be here for one another is that we care enough. We care enough to win the person back, to win the wandering and the lost. In some cases, it is going out to find the person, getting back in contact with them. In some cases, it may be to confront and to admonish. Those who are non-confrontational, like me, I like like this is a scary, scary thing, right? But in uh Galatians chapter 2, verse 14, that's what we saw, right? In Galatians chapter 2, 14, where we talk about the conduct is not in step with the truth of the gospel. Um in that passage, Paul was opposing another apostle. He was opposing Peter. So, uh yeah, um in verses 14 to 11 to 14, right? But when Cephas came to Antioch, Paul says, I opposed him to his faith because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James from Jerusalem, he was eating with the Gentiles. He was like one of the Gentiles, right? But when they came, he drew back and separated himself from the Gentiles, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. So verse 14, what I read just now. But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, if you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews? Most of us will shrink away at the thought of confronting someone, much as confronting someone in this fashion, right? But you may find yourself in situations where you have to say something. Maybe not like Paul, maybe not oppose the person to his face, right? But there will be times where we need to have the courage to broach a particular topic and to confront someone. Not out of anger or anything, but out of love for the wandering brother or sister. And finally, so there may be cases where you need to go out and find a person, there may be cases where you need to confront, and there may be cases where you need to just wait for the Lord to bring him back. Right? Like the parable of the lost son, again in Luke chapter 15, now verses 11 to 32, right? Where all you can do like the father is to just pray and wait for the lost son to return. Whatever it is, whatever situation you find yourself in, we must care enough. We must love and care enough to want to restore a person back into the community. And so these are the final encouragement from James, right? We are here for one another, right? Church, we are here for one another. And gives us these two principles: confession accompanied by prayer and reclamation to win someone back, to bring back the lost. And so, as I begin to conclude this sermon, I just want to offer two additional points to these uh two principles and add some caveats. Um because as we can already see and recognize, there can be a lot of problems to practicing these two uh principles in our church. Right? It can open up, uh we can open up ourselves to all kinds of abuse, spiritual abuse especially. But let me just give you a first a first point about confession. Find and get together with a small group of people that you can trust to share your life with. Find a small group of people to journey together. Uh such a group can go by different names, can have different formats. We have, I'm sure we are quite familiar with with this concept, right? It can be like a dish discipleship band uh in the times of John Wesley. You know, you meet together, you you pray, you study scripture, you self-examine, and and so on. Right? Uh it can take on the model of Tan Suins 3 to 1, if you remember, right? Spiritual friendship, where we meet, uh where three people gather and meet for two hours uh once a month, right? Three to one.

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Or it can just be a good old-fashioned accountability group, right? Um I have a small group that I I meet regularly with. Uh, this is an accountability group that I met that I had uh back when I was in TTC. Um and I'm really grateful to them actually. They formed the group and they uh they invited me into the group, right? And so I have kind of just been there uh over the last uh I know it's like 12 years already. Yeah. We try to meet once a month, we celebrate each with each other in our joys, we open we are open with our sins and our struggles, and we hold each other accountable and uphold one another in prayer. And I have benefited greatly in my faith, in my ministry, in my family life. And so find people that you can journey together with. But the caveats are this be discerning and find people you trust. And if you are in a group like this, be trustworthy, right? And not share publicly what has been said in confidence. And lastly, I just want to say confession of our sins to one another should not be done lightly, right? If we want to confess our sins, it has to be with a desire to be healed, with a desire to be rid of the sin. And not because we want attention, and not because we want company or or but but we have no conviction to change. Right? Don't take confession lightly. And that's the first thing, right? Find people that you can come together with. The second would be that confrontation, when we try to reclaim or try to win someone bad, confrontation must be grieved. Uh, what I mean by that is that it is not a happy thing to confront someone. We don't confront someone because we enjoy it, we confront someone because we have been grieved by the wandering of a sister or brother. And so 1 Corinthians 5, 1 to 2 kind of tells us, um, shows us a picture of what it looks like, right? Um here, you know, Peter Paul receives a report about a man sleeping with his mother, right? And in verse 2 he says, Ought you not rather mourn? Ought you not rather be grieved by what your brother is doing in church, right? Umfrontation and admonition must be done out of love, right? That you become grieved by the one wandering away from the truth. And so we speak the truth in love, right? That's Ephesians 4.15. We speak the truth in love. And what that means is we don't speak it harshly or carelessly, right? Sometimes we we tell people, yeah, I'm straight and blunt, I'm this kind of person, right? I'll tell you straight to the face. I I won't I won't I won't hide my words, I don't mean my words, right? Um and sometimes some people are straight and blunt, but sometimes it just means we don't actually care enough. It is not done out of love, right? Because if we speak the truth in love, we will care about how the person is receiving the things we are saying. Right? And that means that we are more tactful in conveying the truth. We actually want to win the person over, right? And not simply hammer home a point. Right? To speak the truth in love then would mean that we speak in such a way that is winsome, that will bring the person back, bring the person to our side. Right? And we remember, of course, 1 Corinthians 13 in the way we approach and bring back a wondering brother or sister. I will just very quickly read it out because I don't we don't have much time. But um, 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verse 4 onwards love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast, it is not arrogant or rude, it does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. And so verse 7 love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. So go in in uh into a confrontation with all this in mind patient and kind, not envious or boastful, and so on and so on. Speak the truth in love. And the caveat to this is the great difficulty really lies in whether we have assessed our own motives rightly. Right? And so this is a word of caution. Don't confront out of anger, or out of a self-righteous pride, or out of a sense of superiority. Right? We understand at the end of the day, it is the Holy Spirit that convicts a person, right? And so we confront out of love and we trust that at the end of the day, God will bring the person back. We entrust the person into the hands of our loving Father, and we continue to pray with prayer, pray fervently for the wanderer. And so, church, may we all take James's words seriously and truly as an encouragement. Lots of vulnerability and uh lots of sacrifice, right? To confess our sins on the one hand and then to love and care for the other person on the other hand, right? But let this be an encouragement to all of us as we are exhorted to be here for one another, right? We do not exist as an island, and we cannot tune out what's going on in someone else's life, right? We are a family, and so let us learn to open ourselves up and confess to one another, pray for one another, and let us also care for one another enough to win to win back the wonder.

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We pray that you've been ministered to the Word of God today. If you'd like to know more about the Eastern Christian Church, please visit our website at ycccanglic.com. Have a blessed day.