The Small Things Are Really Big Things

English

The small things are Really Big Things

James 5:7-11

This week's Bible passage brings us to a subject I've briefly mentioned several times in my series in James, i.e., why does Pastor James so often seem to make a big deal out of what many people consider to be small things. Why does he make so much of things like listening and speaking, like welcoming both poor and rich, like being open to reason, and like remembering God in each decision you make? In this week's text, Pastor James speaks about being patient and not grumbling. Many of us might be excused if we think, "God is too big to care about such things. God surely cares more about things like murder and violence and abusiveness." I'm quite sure James would say, "God does care about those things and will judge them. But, he does not consider as small those things you consider small."
One of the all-pervasive lessons of the book of James is that the big spiritual direction-setters in our lives
don't always happen at those moments that most human being think are the big spotlight moments. Let me remind you of how we who follow Jesus see the world: We believe that a billion years from now, we still will be. And, James teaches that the things that will determine who you are in the end – who you will be billions of years from now – will be the seemingly small choices you make day by day and moment by moment. So, one of the most important areas, according to James is the kind of choice we make every day, i.e., to be patient and wait for God or to grow impatient. That brings us to James 5:7-11.
James says that the Judge over all judges, God himself, is standing right by us ready to judge our impatient hearts and grumbling mouths. "Whew!" you may say. "Why would a big God care about such things?" But, I hope Pastor James' words will help you understand why this is so important to the Lord.
And that's what I want to talk about today. James 5:7-11 is often considered to be less weighty in its teaching than other parts of James' letter. In some ways, I have found it to be among the most important passages in James' letter. James tells us in 5:7-11 why one of the surest signs of genuine faith is the ability to wait upon God patiently, a patience that comes out inevitably in the way we speak.

#1. What "Small Things" Does God's Word Warn Us About?
Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord's coming... Don't grumble (5:7a, 9a).
I've asked many of you this week, "Do you ever pray that God will help you to be patient?" Several of you quickly answered, "I've learned not to!" That response shows that we understand that it takes trials to build the strength that makes patience possible. I spoke about this in my sermon from James 1:2-4. Because of that, there is a sense in which praying for patience is also asking for trials. And few of us want those! In ch. 1, James pointed out clearly that trials born with patience will make us strong. Now, in ch. 5, he makes a related but slightly different point. He says that patience leads to a way of life that has a beneficial impact on our souls and in the world. Or, to put it more accurately – James says that patience's opposite, impatience, leads to a destructive and miserable way of life – both for us and for those around us.
The heartbeat of these verses is a call to patience. James used several words for patience in these 5 verses, words that are translated in various ways: "steadfastness", "endurance", "standing firm", "established hearts", "perseverance"... So, let's be clear: Patience is important to God. When you are patient, you show you believe that God is present and that he is at work – even if he is doing something you cannot understand. Therefore, patience is one of the surest evidences that your faith truly is in God. On then other hand, impatience is clear evidence that you do not trust God.
This comes out in many ways: You may not trust God's plan and want to take over for him. Or, you may not trust God's timing and want things to happen faster! The point is that when you see impatience growing in your inner being, you can be quite sure that you are heading down a path that will takes you away from God. You walk with God by faith. But when you don't really believe God, you can see it by your impatience – by your unwillingness to wait on him.
Now – how do you know when impatience is becoming a spiritual problem? James says that you can detect that faithless impatience is becoming a cancer in your soul when you see it coming out through your mouth in the form of grumbling. The whole of Scripture tells us that our mouths have the potential of being a conduit of God's salvation through Jesus, of encouragement and of relational healing. But, the mouth can be like a sewage pipe carrying the junk that is happening in our souls out into the world and doing nothing but damage. A mouth that complains and grumbles is one of the surest signs of a "my life for me" life.
I don't think that by "grumbling" the Bible is talking about speaking honestly about the trials we are going through. That's an important part of any honest relationship. When we share the trials we have with others, then we can help one another. We can pray for one another with specificity. We can bear one anothers' burdens. Honest sharing is an important part of a marriage, of a family and of a church.
James is referring to what we've all experienced – in fact, I imagine we've all engaged in, i.e., a spirit of constant complaining. It's sprit that always seeks pity – not prayer. The complainer always wants you to know how busy he is, how troubling his family is, how irritating that song at church was... I could go on and on with this. I'm quite sure you know what James is referring to.
And, with one phrase in v.9, James gets at a particularly dangerous part of grumbling for our lives. When impatience makes its way into our words, we often lash out most fiercely at those closest to us. James wrote, "Don't grumble against one another, brothers and sisters." My wife, Chris, has taught me a lot about this part of grumbling. She has told people that she is particularly carful about not using her words to tear down me or her family. Chris says she knows that those are the relationships she cherishes the most so they are the ones that she most wants to protect. She is so wise in this. The Bible lets us know that, when it comes to those close to us, we tend to take the relationship for granted and, therefore, we don't always speak with great care about the impact of our words. We destroy those relationships often through grumbling.
Impatience takes root in our hearts and comes out through our mouths through attacking people. It's finding fault with people. Knitpicking. We may say, "Big deal. Why would God care about that? Why sweat such small stuff?" God says, "It's not small stuff." "Why?" you may ask. Because grumbling is the seed of something that is toxic. It destroys the peace, the shalom, that Jesus died to bring about. Impatience shouts out that we don't trust God enough to wait for him. It destroys us from the inside out. It takes over our hearts and turns us into angry and vindictive people. And it comes out through our mouths and destroys those around us, including our families and our church.
No one has seen this more clearly than CS Lewis. His classic book, The Great Divorce is all about this topic. It's a fictitious story of a man who is given the chance to leave hell and visit heaven, along with a bus load of other residents of hell, to see whether it really is all they imagined. In heaven, each of the visitors from hell encounters someone from their pasts who pleads with them to stay in heaven, which, in Lewis' fiction, is still open to them. But, each encounter eventually brings the people to the issue that kept them out of heaven in the first place and which, in God's eyes, hasn't changed. What could possibly cause a person to refuse heaven and head back to hell? With incredible insight, Lewis writes about the reasons all of them refuse heaven. It's not because heaven is not infinitely better than hell. It is! The reason is because the visitors have become so self-obsessed and hateful of a God who might require something of them that they would rather spend eternity in hell with only their self-justification for comfort.
Near the end, as the visitor continues to look around heaven with his fellow passengers having returned to the bus, he begins to realize that for all of us there is a choice to be faced while we are still alive. Do we choose to love God and to serve our neighbors or do we instead choose to focus on ourselves. The self-centered life comes out through worrying that others are getting more attention, or credit, or don't notice us... whatever it might be. These two very different directions, living for self or living for God and others, change who we are. Given a long enough time span, the choices we make to live for self or for God will turn us into two very different characters. When we choose to go the way of self-centeredness, that way of life shapes us into who we are. It becomes more and more impossible for us to turn back to God.
The visitor is especially struck by a woman whose only problem seems to be that she complains too much. He asks his guide, a man named George MacDonald, why this is such a big deal. Why would this keep the woman from heaven? MacDonald drives home the same point made by James: That her grumbling is evidence of a woman who is obsessed with self and who has no love for God or for others:
"Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others... but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop. But there comes a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no 'you' left to criticize the mood or even enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God 'sending us' to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE Hell unless it is nipped in the bud."
According to the Bible, what some may think is a small thing, the impatience that leads us to complain, is not a small thing at all. It is not the way God made you to live. God's call upon you is a call to trust him. To learn to wait on him. In a word, it's a call to a beautiful thing: contentment, contentment with who you are and what you have. Contentment that is not based upon circumstances but upon trust in God.

#2. What does a life of patient faith look like?
See how the farmer waits... Take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord... You have heard of Job's perseverance (5:7,10,11).

Teacher 1: The Farmer: We don't have many farmers here at LAC, but I'm sure we can understand what James was getting at. In 1st C Israel, the farmer planted his crop in the dry season and then had to wait for the autumn rains. The farmer was faithful to do what he had to do in farming – tilling the soil, planting the crop, getting rid of weeds.... But others things were outside his control. So, the farmer had to learn to wait for God to do his work. As he waited, he faced countless obstacles. He had a role to play with some of them, like getting rid of weeds. He had to be faithful in the things God had entrusted to him. But, with things like rain, he had to wait for God. Worrying. Becoming anxious or irritated. Those things didn't help. He had to learn to wait for God's timing. James says, "That's what a life of faith is like."

Teacher 2: The Prophets: Prophets are important because they make it clear that the kind of patience that James is talking about is not the same as just sitting back and saying or doing nothing; just supporting the status quo. Read about Amos or Elijah in the OT and you'll see they thundered against the evils of their day. They were persecuted because they were not content simply to be passively good. They actively stood up and spoke for what was right in the world. That's what a prophet was one who, according to James, spoke in the name of the Lord.
James says that we who are now followers of Jesus are to stand in that same tradition, to stand and speak the values of our Lord in the name of our Lord. To refuse to be a complainer is not the same as being non vocal. So the call to patience in the midst of difficulty isn't to be confused with simply leaving things the way they are. The prophets were strong and radical in their calls to turn to God – in their calls for change. Prophets obeyed God and spoke out. James calls us to do the same. Refusing to grumble does not mean that we shut our mouths. Let's learn that from the prophets.

Teacher 3: Job: Job is just as important to consider as the prophets. He's important because Job's life makes it clear that the kind of patience that Jesus and James call for is not the same as Stoic indifference. Remember that Job didn't try to deny his emotions. He was in agony and he was honest about it. He confessed his pain and his doubts to his friends and to God. What he endured was tough, tough for him. And, he was open about it. I know that it's sometimes difficult for us to discern the difference between sharing our burdens with God and with friends on one side and complaining on the other. But Job was not consumed by impatience or by grumbling. He endured. That's the point the Bible is teaching here.
To use James' word, he persevered. That Greek word has the idea of the kind of fortitude or inner strength that struggles on through difficulties because it knows God is there and has a purpose for what is happening. It's one that has faith that on the other side of the difficulties there is something to be gained. Patient perseverance is not indifferent to problems. No, because faith in God enables us to see a purpose in whatever happens. Because of that, the person of faith does not give up. He waits on God.
And that's what James pointed out to his congregation. Do you see it? He went on to say, "You have seen what the Lord finally brought about" in v.11. Even in the worst of situations, God was doing something. God had an overarching goal in this whole business of Job's sufferings. Job kept going and God's goal happened in God's time. At the end, Job discovered that, even though he had a hard time seeing it in the midst of pain, God is full of compassion and mercy. At the end, James knew that truth in a whole new way. He knew it precisely because he had been through the trials, and pain, and loss, and unjust statements of others – and had seen the glory of God on the other side.
I'm convinced God does not mind us asking "why". He doesn't want us to bottle up our sufferings, our doubt, or our questions, any more than Job did. Any more than Jesus did! Jesus asked, My God, my God, why? It was a part of the honest agony of the cross. But Jesus went to the cross because he knew God was doing a great work through that cross.
What God does expect is that we will persevere because we believe there is an answer to the question why. We will keep living and speaking as Christ has taught us to because we believe it even if we don't know what that answer is. He wants us to persevere, to remain in the faith, to live for Him, because we know there is a goal that is in perfect harmony with God's perfect character of love and compassion. And because we know that, we are able to be content and patient and godly – without grumbling -- even when we are going through the worst of times. But, how do we go from where we are now to a life of patience?

#3. How do we Grow out of Impatience and into Trust?
1) Do a heart and mouth check – Identifying the problem and calling it what it is – that's always an important part of our healing and re-making. Do you see seeds of impatience in your heart? Are they coming out through your speech already thorough complaining? If you're not sure, ask your family and friends. But, you have to be humble and ready to receive their input! As James pointed out, those closeset to us are often the ones most affected by our impatience.
2) Pray specifically and fervently about this area of your life – Impatience is so deceptive that you will need God's help. And he will help you! Pray that God will replace your impatience with faith. Pray that, as King David put it, God will set a watch over your lips. Pray that God will enable the grumbling to stop and the praise and gratitude to flow forth.
3) Pause while you pray – and consider a much longer view than the world in general can – Christians can wait in ways that others cannot. Why? Because we know how God brings victory out of pain – like he did through Jesus' cross. We know that God is good. And we know that Jesus is going to return and make all things right. James wrote: Be patient until the Lord's coming. Most people can't wait. They feel they have less than 100 years at most and that they have to experience heaven on earth somehow before it's over. So people want all they can get now.
But a Christian can be patient. When we believe in Jesus, we know that there is something in the future that we won't be allowed to miss. It's the Lord's coming. V 7: "Until Jesus returns." V.8: "The Lord's coming is near." That point puts a different complexion on everything in this world, doesn't it? I mean, if we really believe Jesus is returning to make everything right, it makes my grumblings look rather ridiculous.
"He is coming!" says James. Jesus will make sure justice is done if a colleague or employer has mistreated you. He'll deal with unethical wealthy people you envy. He will heal your pains. He will take away your anxiety. Be patient and don't complain because Jesus is returning.
The last question that James faces you with in this text is, "Do you believe Jesus will return – or do you not?" If you do believe Jesus will return, it will make an enormous difference in how you plan your time (4:13-17) and how you use money (5:1-6) and how you learn to be patient (5:7-11). Let me say it clearly: We don't have to be ashamed of believing there is a heaven. We have an empty tomb on our side saying there is life beyond this life. We have the testimony of Scripture on our side. When we trust God's Word, we can afford to be patient ... until the Lord's coming.
So, examine your ways! Don't minimize the "small things" like patience and grumbling. Christians know that each moment of life matters and that each decision we make affects who we are. A billion years from now, you will still exist. Small things are not small things. They are making you what you will be. Remember Jesus' words: He who is faithful in little will also be faithful in much. So, be patient and do not grumble – until the coming of the Lord. Be patient and do not grumble. The Lord's return is near.

To His glory,

Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor