On April 18, 1906 San Francisco went through the worst catastrophe of California
history. An earthquake devastated the city, and a fire broke out that left that once
thriving metropolis a heap of smoldering ruins. The cost in lives and property was
beyond calculation. Yet, in the midst of all this destruction and death people were
preoccupied with the trivia of life. A mortician sat on the front steps of his office and
polished coffin handles, like Nero fiddling while Rome burned. You want to get angry at
this man for giving himself to trifles in the midst of such a major disaster, but the
question is, if the handles needed polishing, why not do it? It is a trivial task, but coffins
would be needed, and people would demand that they be clean and shiny. The trivial
cannot be evaded or avoided, for it is a perpetual part of life.
It is a crazy world where you cannot get life set up like a furniture store. All of the
chairs in one place, and all of the beds in another, and the lamps and dressers in still
another. And all the nuts and bolts and plastic and packing materials are isolated out of
sight so as not to detract from the beauty. In life all of this stuff is mixed together with
the trivial and the tremendous in the same room. No matter what tragedies people go
through, they still have to pay the light bill, dust the end tables, put twisties back on the
bread, and dozens of other trivial duties to maintain order. The trivial is inseparable
from the tremendous in every day life. We sometimes feel guilty about it if we go on
doing trivial things when there is a tremendous crisis going on. You are not always
involved in what is a major issue, but you are always involved in what is minor, and so the
trivial is a perpetual part of all of our lives. You get rest from the tremendous, but the
trivial is ever with you. Gamaliel Bradford wrote-
I think about God, yet I talk of small matters.
Now isn't it odd how my idle tongue chatters,
Of quarrelsome neighbors,
Fine weather and rain,
Indifferent labors,
Indifferent pain.
Some trivial style,
Fashion shifts with a nod
And yet all the while
I am thinking of God.
What Jesus is saying to us in this paragraph is that we must take the trivial seriously,
for how we deal with a value, even the least of God's commands, will determine our status
in the kingdom of heaven. In other words, the trivial can be tremendous. Jesus goes so
far as to say, not a jot or tittle is insignificant. Not the smallest letter, or the least stroke
of the pen is really trivial. In our system, not the dotting of an i, or the crossing of a t, is
so trivial that God will neglect it, or ignore it in His plan. Every detail of value, however
trivial, will be fulfilled, therefore, nothing of God's law and revelation is so trivial that we
can ignore it without loss. The silly poet wrote-
One day I sat upon a chair,
Of course the bottom wasn't there;
Nor legs, nor back, but I just sat,
Ignoring little things like that.
But little though they be, you cannot ignore them and prevent a fall, and so it is with the
least of God's laws. Jesus says, if you want to be a nobody in the kingdom, just ignore the
trivial, and violate its purpose, and teach others the same, and you've got it. But if you want to be
somebody in the kingdom, you have got to see the trivial can be tremendous. One of the
major problems of Christians all through history is the promoting of their own gifts and
activities to the detriment of others. The hand says to the foot, I have no need of you.
The Christian in evangelism says, the Christian in social service is wasting his time.
What good is a cup of cold water if a man is going to hell? The social service Christian
says, what good is the Gospel to a man who is starving and thirsty? Christians fight each
other saying, I am the greatest. Jesus says, not so, for they are both least in the kingdom
if they teach that the least commandment is unimportant. The greatest are those who
know obedience to all of God's will is important, and they teach and do it, for the trivial
cup of cold water, and the tremendous message of the cross are both part of God's plan.
We get an insight here into the way God works. God is into the big, for He created the
whole vast universe, but the fact is, He built all the bigness of creation out of the small.
The whole of everything is built upon the trivial. The trivial little atom which is so small
and insignificant in itself, that I can rub millions of them off my hands and not see any
difference, are the basis for all that is tremendous. The poet wrote-
Little drops of water, little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean, and the pleasant land.
Time has many aspects to it, and goes from seconds to minutes; to hours; to days; to
weeks; to months; to years; to decades; to generations; to centuries; to millenniums; to
eons. But if you really want to see when time is important, watch the Olympics where
victory and defeat depend on 1,000's of a second. All that makes it such tremendous
competition is in those trivial moments of time. In daily life we do not waste years,
months and weeks, but we waste minutes and hours, and here is where the real battle with
time is. It is not on the upper level, but on the lower level of the trivial, and how we do on
this level can make a tremendous difference in life. The same is true with money. We
don't waste millions and thousands, but we do waste pennies to dollars, and what we do
with the trivial always makes a tremendous difference.
God builds your life into what is tremendous by what, in itself, is trivial. The
seemingly insignificant events in life are the stepping stones to what is significant. Some
boys brought an injured shepherd dog to Florence Nightingale. She agreed to help heal
the dog, and as she ministered to it she became infatuated with the idea of ministering to
suffering humanity. Her compassion for a dog led her to become the Angel of the
Crimean War, and mother of modern nursing. The trivial led to the tremendous. This is
the way God has worked in millions of lives.
Most of us would agree, it is a rather trivial choice as to which pair of socks you wear.
President James Garfield had his whole life changed by his choice of socks. The day he
was to leave home for a long trip he injured his foot chopping wood. The blue dye in the
home-made sock he wore poisoned the wound, and he had to cancel his trip. While he was
home recovering, a revival broke out in his community, and he was converted. He wrote,
"New desires and new purposes then took possession of me, and I was determined to seek
an education that I might live more usefully for Christ." His choice of socks led to his
choosing the Savior. The trivial led to the tremendous.
One of the lessons Jesus most often sought to teach us is the lesson on the largeness of
the little; the significance of the small; the mightiness of the minute, and the
tremendousness of the trivial. Michaelangelo labored on detail, and someone asked him
why he would bother with details that no one would notice. He replied, "Trifles make for
perfection, and perfection is no trifle." Jesus said that those who are faithful in a very
little are faithful also in much. If you give a money manager $500.00, and he loses some
of it, you will not trust him with $5,000.00. If he does well with a little, then you will trust
him with a lot.
One sheep is a trivial percentage of a flock, but when that one is lost, it becomes a
major issue, and the 99 are left in order to focus on finding the one. The trivial becomes
the priority. The trivial mite of the widow was like the pennies of the little child in the
Sunday School offering. Truly trivial in the over all budget of the church, but Jesus
exalted her gift to the level of the greatest gift of all, because it represented her all.
Others gave far more, but it was far from their all. Because it was her all, her trivial
became tremendous. People often think if they are not gifted it is okay to do nothing, not
realizing that if they give what little they have it can lead to tremendous reward. The one
talent man missed the whole point of Jesus, and he did not use his one trivial talent
wisely. He buried it, for it was nothing compared to the others. He neglected his trivial,
and lost the tremendous reward that could have been his by being faithful with his little.
Jesus said, "As ye did it unto the least of these my brethren you did it unto me." The
slightest expression of love can be a tremendous act of love. Even a cup of cold water
given in His name will not go unrewarded.
In this Sermon on the Mount Jesus is concerned with prevention, and the key to
prevention is in awareness of the value of the trivial. Most all tragedies could be
prevented by attention to the trivial. People make their biggest mistakes by thinking that
their righteousness is established on the major issues of life. If they do not murder
and commit adultery, and some other super sin, they are really on top of things. Jesus
says, not so! He looks at the track record on the level of the trivial. You can keep all of
the major laws of God, and still live a life that has no love for people. You do not respect
them, or trust them as persons made in the image of God. You degrade their personality
by your language. You call them names, curse them, and treat them like things. You
evaluate people's value by whether they are on your side, your race, your church, your
school, etc., rather than their value to God.
The whole point of Jesus is, if Christians are to be the salt of the earth, and the light
of the world, they have to break out of the mold of the Pharisees, and start recognizing
that the law is fulfilled in love, and love is not just lifting up lofty ideals, but in little daily
acts of lifting people, because you care about them as persons, and that care is expressed
in the language you use, and in the attitudes you have toward them. We all fail most right
here at the point of not recognizing that the trivial is tremendous. Like the Pharisees, we
are proud if we get through a day and have not murdered, raped, or robbed someone,
with no thought of whether or not we said a kind word to encourage, or went out of our way
to do some trivial act to let others know we care about them as persons.
We think the great in the kingdom are those doing the wonders of world wide impact.
But the fact is, if they are great, it is not because of these things, but because they light a
candle in someone's darkness, and sprinkle a few grains of salt on someone's tasteless
day. It is the trail of trivial kindnesses that make a person great in the kingdom of God,
and that trail is open to all of us to travel daily. Jesus is saying, if you want to be in the
major leagues of righteousness, don't focus on the big stuff, but on the little stuff.
Alexander Maclaren, the great English preacher, wrote, "It is the very spirit of
Christianity that the biggest thing is to regulate the smallest duties of life. Men's lives are
made up of two or three big things, and a multitude of little ones, and the greater rule the
lesser, and, my friends, unless we have got a religion and a morality that can and will
keep the trifles of our lives right there will be nothing right."
Jesus goes on in this great sermon to make clear that all big sins start small. Murder
starts with anger and resentment, and name calling. Adultery starts with lustful looks.
To prevent the big sins of life you need to deal with the trivial, and keep them under
control. Benjamin Franklin wrote, "For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a
shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost." A man's life was lost
because of neglect of a tiny nail. Neglect of the trivial in any area of life can lead to
tremendous loss.
Let's not assume that Jesus is saying, there is no such thing as the insignificant. The
littleness and pickiness of the legalistic Pharisees was one of His biggest complaints. It is
possible to major on minors, and get so tangled up in the trivial you never get to the
tremendous. In Matt. 23:23-24, Jesus blasts the Pharisees for this very thing. "You
hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices, mint, dill, and cummin. But you have
neglected the more important matters of the law-justice, mercy and faithfulness. You
should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You
strain out a gnat but swallow a camel." Here is the perversion of what Jesus is teaching.
If the trivial is tremendous, then let us devote our lives to the trivial. Such was the logic
of the Pharisees, and it led to a petty pain of a religion, rather than to the great faith God
intended for the world.
The Jews got into hot debates over trivial things. The law said a man who was
murdered on the highway was to have a sacrifice offered for him by the priest in the
nearest town. The issue was, where do you start the measuring to see which town he is
closest too? Rabbi Eliezer said, from the navel, and Rabbi Akiba said, from the nose. It
is true that trifles often have to be cared for, but when men devote their energies to these
trifles, they lose sight of what is important. It is possible for any of us to get caught up in
trifles that are just that and no more. Queen Victoria once said, "As I get older I cannot
understand the world. I cannot comprehend its littleness. When I look at its frivolities
and littlenesses, it seems to me as if people were all a little mad."
The church has often gotten caught up in legalistic littleness that has nothing to do
with the least commands of God. Charles Goff tells of a church that split over which
street the new entrance to the church would face. After the damage was done, the
entrance was put on the corner where people could go either way, and the problem was
solved. When people blow a minor matter all out of proportion, as if the universe and
God's plan depended on their perspective, they have the mind of the Pharisee, and not
the mind of Christ.
You can make a mountain out of a molehill, and be guilty of the sin of specializing in
the secondary. It can be a tremendous part of your life to give a cup of cold water to the
thirsty, but if you devote your life to giving cold water, and start criticizing other
Christians because they do not do it, you become a pain in the neck of the body of Christ.
You are trying to make the trivial tremendous by your own power, and this leads to folly.
It is blowing the issue out of proportion. It is like the essay on the value of pins. The
author concluded that pins save millions of lives every year by not being swallowed. All
of us are here today because we did not swallow pins this week. It can be made to sound
like the issue of the century, for all of history is affected by whether or not people swallow
pins. It is true, but also truly trivial, for swallowing pins is not a temptation for the vast
majority of people. The point is, it is easy to get caught up in what sounds significant, but
which is really trivial. There is plenty of this, making tragedies of trifles, shooting
butterflies with rifles.
As the light of the world, it is the Christians job to help the world see the difference
between the truly trivial, and the trivial that can be tremendous. That which is really
trivial is that which does not fulfill anything in God's will for the benefit of man. On the
other hand, that which is least in fulfilling God's will is the trivial that can be tremendous.
Our prayer needs to be-
O light eternal fall
Into this world of time,
That all things small
May small abide,
And all things great,
Be magnified.
Do not make your life frustrating by trying to do great things for God. Just do the
trivial things that He wants you to do in your daily life, and you will be doing the trivial
that leads to the tremendous.
