Who do you consider the smartest people in history and the smartest people in the world? We might include the names of authors like Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, financial guru’s like Alan Greenspan, inventors like Alexander Graham Bell and Bill Gates, psychologists like Freud,scientists like Leonardo, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein.

We admire smart people, we are interested in them and we respect their opinions about things. But there is one name I didn’t mention. Have you ever thought of Jesus Christ as the smartest person in all of history?

Here was a man who knew how to transform the molecular structure of water to make it into wine. He knew how to take a few pieces of bread and a few little fish and feed thousands of people. He could literally create matter from the energy he knew how to access from the heavens. Today we think people are smart who make light bulbs and computer chips out of stuff. Jesus could make the stuff!

No wonder they tried to make him king. Surely one who could turn energy into matter could do most anything - like maybe turn gravel to gold and pay off the national debt! Do you think this guy could get elected President or something?

He knew how to make sick tissues in the body healthy again. He knew how to suspend gravity and interrupt weather patterns - in a moment and with only a word. Surely, he would be amused at what Nobel prizes are rewarded for today!

And most incredibly of all, he knew the secret to something people are looking for even now. He knew how to die and actually come back to life again! He said, “Nobody takes my life. I give it up by choice. I am in a position to lay it down, and I am in a position to resume it. My father and I have this all worked out.” (John 10:18) He is someone who can say, “I was dead, and behold I am alive forevermore, the master of the dead and the world of the dead.” (Rev. 1:18)

All of this shows Jesus’ mastery of every phase of reality - physical, moral and spiritual. Jesus is not some sort of mere religious majician. He is not just a nice guy who taught some nice things. Jesus Christ is the smartest man who ever lived. He is truly the ultimate scientist, craftsmen and artist. Even now he holds the whole universe together (Col. 1:17), he is the master of human history (“I am the ruler of the kings of the earth...”), and “in him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” (Col. 2:3)

Jesus always has the best info on everything and certainly this is true regarding the things that matter most. This is why it makes sense to listen to what Jesus has to say. This is why he invites you to become his student, his apprentice and let him teach you how to live. This is why Jesus says,

“Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them is like a wise man who built his house on a rock. The rains came, the streams rose, the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on a rock...”

For the church of Christ in Cherryvale, this is Stan Bryan, asking you to pay attention to the smartest man who ever lived. You’ll be glad you did.