Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In this solo episode of The Reformed Brotherhood, Tony Arsenal opens with a personal update on Jesse's wife Jen, who is recovering from a major surgery and facing ongoing complications. Rather than a typical episode, Tony turns this moment of real pastoral weight into an opportunity to explore James 5:10–18 — a passage about suffering, patience, and the mysterious power of intercessory prayer. Drawing on the examples of the Old Testament prophets, Job, and Elijah, Tony argues that suffering and God's mercy are not in tension but are deeply intertwined throughout Scripture. He also addresses the cessationist convictions he and Jesse hold while affirming the continuing call to bring the sick before the elders of the church in prayer. This episode is brief, earnest, and pastorally rich.
One of the most counterintuitive moves in James 5 is the juxtaposition of Job's suffering with the declaration that "the Lord is compassionate and merciful." For most readers, Job's story feels like the last place you would look for evidence of divine mercy — it is a story of devastating, layered loss. But James insists that the very narrative of Job, with all of its pain, is where the mercy and purpose of God are most clearly displayed. Tony highlights this as "counterintuitive but really quite beautiful." The suffering does not negate the mercy; it is, in some mysterious sense, the vessel through which mercy is revealed. This is not stoic resignation — it is a theologically grounded confidence that God's purposes are always working toward the good of His people, even when circumstances seem to contradict that.
Perhaps the most theologically careful section of the episode is Tony's treatment of what it means for prayer to "move" God without compromising classical theistic commitments to divine immutability and impassibility. Tony is careful here: he affirms that God does not change, does not undergo emotional mutation, and is not subject to creaturely pressure. And yet, he insists — with the Bible — that prayer does something. He describes this as God acting in "accommodated, creaturely language," a concession to our finite understanding of an infinite God who, in His sovereign wisdom, has ordained prayer as a genuine means through which He accomplishes His will. This is not open theism or Arminian concession; it is a mature Reformed affirmation that God's decrees include the prayers of His people as real instruments of His providential governance.
The closing appeal to Elijah is rhetorically powerful precisely because James refuses to let Elijah remain on a pedestal. The instinct of the reader is to think, of course Elijah's prayers worked — he was Elijah. But James dismantles that escape route immediately: "a man with a nature like ours." The miracles associated with Elijah — the drought, the rain, Mount Carmel — were not the product of Elijah's superhuman spiritual constitution. They were the product of a God who moves when His people pray. This democratizes intercessory prayer in the most profound way. The ordinary believer who kneels beside a sick friend's hospital bed is operating in the same spiritual economy as Elijah on Mount Carmel. The power belongs to God; the call to pray belongs to all of us.
There's something about the prayer of God's people that in an accommodated, analogous way, an anthropomorphic way — there's something about the prayers of God's people that moves Him to act on their behalf.
We hold those to be true, but we also see that the Bible reveals a God who moves when His people pray.
The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. But that power is not coming from the righteous person — because even Elijah, even as amazing as Elijah was, he was a man with a nature like ours.
[00:00:47] Welcome to this special episode of The Reformed Brotherhood. I'm Tony, and tonight this is the podcast that's just me. Hey, brothers and sisters. It's just Tony tonight. [00:01:00] Um, you'll hear in a little bit why that is, but, uh, just wanted to come this week and do a real quick episode. We're gonna dive into, uh, James chapter five.
[00:01:10] We're gonna talk a little bit about some suffering, some patience, and what the prayer of faith does. And rather than do an affirmation or denial tonight, uh, as you know, Jesse is not on the show tonight, uh, but I wanted to give you a quick update.
[00:01:25] Tony Arsenal: Uh, several episodes ago, maybe, I don't know, 10 episodes ago, Jesse's wife Jen, uh, must have been longer than that actually.
[00:01:32] Jesse's wife Jen, uh, joined the podcast, uh, to share a little bit about what's going on in her life and some medical challenges she's been having. And as you all know, uh, Jen had a, a rather extensive surgery, it was about 11 hours, back in May, and her recovery has been, uh, challenging to say the least. Um, so the reason Jesse's not with us tonight is Jen has had a s- a little bit of a setback.
[00:01:58] Um, she's okay. [00:02:00] Jesse and, uh, Jen gave me permission to give this little update. Uh, I won't go into too many details, but, uh, Jesse's, um, Jen has had some ongoing, uh, complications with some infection and just some other general challenges that have made recovery a lot slower than we'd hoped. So I know that Jesse, uh, appreciates your prayers.
[00:02:21] Jen appreciates your prayers.
[00:02:22] Tony Arsenal: So before we, um, before we go on to the podcast tonight, if you would take a few minutes, pause this, say a quick prayer for, uh, Jen, that her recovery would be governed and supervised by God, that the doctors would have wisdom. Uh, and say a quick prayer for Jesse. Uh, caregiver stress is a real thing, and Jesse is, uh, doing a lot to try to support Jen and make sure that she has what she needs.
[00:02:47] Uh, and even in the midst of that, he has typically got more than enough energy to, uh, even compensate for me when I'm too tired to do a podcast. That's why you guys get solo episodes with him. Uh, but tonight he just needed an extra little bit of a dose of [00:03:00] rest, and I thought that we would take this opportunity to, to pray for him.
[00:03:03] So go ahead and hit pause, say a quick prayer, and then join me back up here in a second.
[00:03:08] Tony Arsenal: So as I said, we're gonna jump into James chapter 5. Uh, this is a, a passage that I know is near and dear to Jesse's heart. Uh, he's shared a little bit about this passage on the show before, and kind of that it's been a, sort of a boon to his soul.
[00:03:23] So I'm gonna start reading... Uh, I'm gonna make a connection here that I don't know is always made with this passage. So I'm gonna start reading here in verse 10. Uh, normally we would wanna start a little bit before that, and, and of course, the whole letter is an ongoing sustained argument, so it's not like you can just chunk one part out.
[00:03:41] But because of the way our English translations are sometimes, uh, divided up, we tend to separate verses 10 through 12 from what follows, and I hope as we chat for just a little while tonight, it'll be a short episode, I hope we'll understand why these two are actually, uh, quite connected. So James chapter 5, [00:04:00] starting in verse 10.
[00:04:01] "As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remain steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. And above all, my brothers, do not swear either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, or let...
[00:04:24] but let your yes be yes and your no be no, so that you may not fall into condemnation. Is any one of 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.
[00:04:44] And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 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 in [00:05:00] its working. Elijah was a man like us, with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain.
[00:05:07] And for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit. My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins."
[00:05:28] So we're gonna zero in here right on verse 10, and kinda how it connects with, uh, what follows here.
[00:05:36] Tony Arsenal: So this passage as a whole, starting in the beginning of verse, uh, verse five, sorta brings... Or chapter five, brings us into sort of an eschatological framework. James is talking about the sort of final judgment against the proud rich who are persecuting the church and who are, uh, sort of offending the Lord by, um, persecuting His people.
[00:05:58] And so in verse seven [00:06:00] now James turns to encourage the, um, the believer not to, um, not to despair because the coming of the Lord seems slow. It's very similar to what Peter does when he, he talks about how, um, God does not will that any of His people perish, but He's seemingly delaying His coming so that all may come to repentance.
[00:06:23] James is doing something very similar here, and so it's in that context that we get to verse 10. He's... In verse seven he's commanding them, or he's encouraging them to be patient, and in verse 10, he gives this example of patience and suffering. And the, the example is, uh, broadly speaking, is the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.
[00:06:46] If you think about most of the prophets in the Old Testament, their message was not widely received. Probably the most outwardly successful prophet in the Old Testament was Jonah, uh, and he didn't even wanna be [00:07:00]successful. Um, but most of the prophets, uh, thinking particularly of, like, Jeremiah, uh, who, you know, throughout, even in his own recorded books, uh, was, uh, persecuted and ostracized.
[00:07:13] People tried to kill him. Uh, we think of Isaiah who, you know, church history tells us he was sawn in two. Um, and most of the prophets did not see, uh, uh, any sort of real revival during their ministry. But they patiently continued to preach and come to the Lord and trust that what they were prophesying was, was worth it, that it was going to have its effect.
[00:07:37] Tony Arsenal: So he, uh, he then turns kinda to the ultimate, uh, example of patience. Uh, and, and we would think... We don't necessarily always think of Job as a prophet, but there's definitely prophetic elements there- And it says, "You've heard of the steadfastness of Job." And of course, we know that Job, uh, had everything taken away from him.
[00:07:58] So he, he lived this life where he [00:08:00] was immensely successful. He had a, a large family. He had lots of wealth. He had servants. Uh, religiously, he seemed to be on track. He seemed to have the Lord's favor. He certainly had the Lord's attention. Um, and it was all taken away from him. This is the part that I think is really, uh, counterintuitive but really quite beautiful, is he says, "You've heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you've seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful."
[00:08:29] And we've commented many times on the show that this sort of juxtaposition between, uh, sort of temporal woes or temporal trials and the Lord's mercy and compassion, how they're interrelated in scripture in a way that doesn't really feel intuitive to us. And so we're gonna skip down a little bit here.
[00:08:51] He talks about, um, not swearing oaths, talks about letting your yes be yes, you know, we know. That's obviously connected to this, but we're, we're gonna just pass by that a little [00:09:00] bit.
[00:09:00] Tony Arsenal: 'Cause back in verse 13 now, he returns to this subject of suffering. He says, "Is any among you suffering? Let him pray." So there's this call for those of us who are suffering, and if we're being honest, most of us are suffering in one form or another.
[00:09:17] Uh, we either have some sort of illness, or we're struggling with finances, or maybe we have some kind of depression or some other life circumstance that is making things challenging. And it says... Doesn't say, "Let him seek out the newest self-help trend." Doesn't say, "Let him, uh, let him fixate on the, the most current, up-to-date medical things."
[00:09:40] It doesn't say, "Let him, uh, pursue Financial Peace University." Now, that's not to say those things are not good and important, but the command here is to let him pray. So when we face suffering, we should recognize that that suffering and the patience that comes with it is connected [00:10:00] to the mercy and the compassion of the Lord.
[00:10:02] This is probably the main point and theme of James' whole letter. So you go back to verse-- or chapter one, I think it's verse 24, right? It says, um- Let it be counted all joy when you face trials of many different kinds, right? So James' whole purpose in this letter is to speak to those suffering, uh, persecuted Jewish Christians that have been scattered out into the, uh, Judean wilderness and the, the countryside, who had been scattered out into the, you know, into the country and were being preyed upon probably by wealthy Jewish landowners.
[00:10:39] And the whole point of this letter is to encourage them and for them to recognize that the suffering that they're undergoing, whether there's a natural suffering, a natural evil, which obviously would be something like sickness or some sort of natural tragedy, what, what the old insurance language calls like an act of God, which is literally an act of God, something like a, like a storm that [00:11:00] ruins your crop or an earthquake that destroys your home, or m- or moral evil, which is what the, the, um, those Christians in James' audience were, were suffering under, was moral evil.
[00:11:12] Says, "If any of you are suffering, let him pray." Well, how could we ever think about praying in the midst of suffering if we did not recognize, as James says, that this suffering is related to the mercy and the compassion of the Lord? That, uh, when we think of the steadfastness of Job, we see the mercy and the compassion of the Lord.
[00:11:40] And then it goes on to say, "Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praises." Well, what did, what did James command in the beginning of his book or what did he, he say? "Count it all joy when you face suffering of any kind." And so now we have, "Are you suffering?" Well, then you, you count it joy. "Well, are you [00:12:00] cheerful?
[00:12:00] Tony Arsenal: Let you sing praise." And that brings us now to verse fourteen: "Is any among you sick?" Well, what do we do or what should we do when we're sick, when we're suffering, when we recognize that that suffering is to... unto our salvation, it's unto our sanctification? Well, we're cheerful and we praise, and we come and we join the church.
[00:12:20] We come and call for the elders. We have them pray over us. They anoint us in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith, verse fifteen, the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick. Now, we know that, um, God moves in all sorts of ways Uh, Jesse and I are both committed cessationists, convicted cessationists.
[00:12:43] We don't believe that the sign gifts, that, that the miracles that marked the, the Revelation period of the New Testament and the Old Testament, we don't believe that those sign gifts continue. But what we do know is that the Lord, through his servant [00:13:00] James, commands his people to seek out the elders of the church when they're sick and for them to pray over them.
[00:13:06] And I know that Jen, uh, and Jesse have really, really great elders. They've got great support at their church. I know that there are people praying for both of them. Um, and, and this podcast is not a church, and our listeners are not the elders of the church, although some of our listeners are elders, but they're not elders...
[00:13:22] I don't think there's any of them at Jesse's church.
[00:13:24] Tony Arsenal: Um, but there is a principle here in this passage that I think is important for us as we, as we lift Jesse and Jen up in prayer, as we think about others in our life who need prayer, who need support, who are sick, who are suffering, is that the prayer, and this is where it comes in, uh, at towards the end here, the prayer of a righteous person, verse 16, "The prayer of a righteous person has great power in its working."
[00:13:49] There's something about prayer, and I don't fully understand it, this is something w- I will spend the rest of my life trying to understand. There's something about the prayer of God's [00:14:00] people that in a, an accommodated, analogous way, an anthropomorphic way, there's something about the prayers of God's people that moves him to act on their behalf.
[00:14:12] And of course, you know, you go back, you listen to all of our episodes on divine simplicity and aseity and divine immutability. We're, we're classical theists. We don't think that God changes. But the, what the Bible teaches us, what it reveals to us in accommodated, creaturely language is that when the elders of the church specifically, and then God's people generally, when we pray, God moves.
[00:14:39] And so that's what I'll leave you with tonight. Um, again, this, this may seem melodramatic or severe. Um, Jen's doing okay. She's, she's sick, and she's recovering. Um, m- but, but it's important for us to pray. So whether it's for Jesse and Jen, and I hope that it is, I hope that you take some more time after this episode to pray [00:15:00] for them and to pray for her specifically.
[00:15:02] But I think we all have people in our lives that we know who are suffering, who are sick, who need the prayers, the powerful prayers of righteous persons to move the heart of God to orient himself to their restoration and to their glory, whether that's restoration from a physical illness in the context here of this passage, and in some senses, it's restoration from spiritual sickness.
[00:15:26] Tony Arsenal: Um, and he closes, and this is the most encouraging part. We think of Elijah as sort of the supreme prophet of the Old Testament Uh, that title might be arguable, uh, to go to, uh, Moses, um, although Moses tends to fall in a different category. But we think of Elijah as this man, this miracle worker, right? We think of Mount Carmel, we think of the other miracles that are associated with Elijah.
[00:15:53] Uh, a- and the Bible here makes the point, James makes the point that Elijah was a man with a nature [00:16:00] like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain for three years and six months, and it did not rain. And so what we see here, and this is what I'll close with, James is reminding us that the power, right, the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.
[00:16:18] But that power is not coming from the righteous person, 'cause even Elijah, even as amazing as Elijah was, he was a man with a nature like ours. So when we look to God, we see that, that He is the one that moves in prayer, but somehow mysteriously, somehow in His special, uh, special wisdom and special guide- counsel, somehow when we prayer- pray, that does something.
[00:16:46] And again, we have to, we have to hold everything else that we understand to be true about God's immutability, His impassibility, His simplicity, all of those things. We hold those to be true, but we also see that the Bible reveals a God who [00:17:00] moves when His people pray.
[00:17:01] Tony Arsenal: So we can trust that if we seek God and we pray agreeably to His will, that He will comfort and encourage and heal His people, and He will bring them back and restore them.
[00:17:13] So that is my prayer and my hope for you tonight, that you would spend some time thinking about the people in your life that could benefit from you taking time to pray for them. Definitely pray for Jesse and for Jen as they're r- as she's recovering and as Jesse is supporting and caring for her. Um, it's a big burden, and he's, he's bearing it her- heroically, but, uh, he, he could use your prayer just as much, uh, as the rest of us.
[00:17:39] So I will leave you with that, brothers and sisters, and until next time, honor everyone, love the brotherhood. [00:18:00]