Do you think Jesus is smart?

I remember being stopped in my tracks when I first read that question which was posed by Dallas Willard. Willard went on to point out that all too many Christians trust Jesus with their life beyond death but don’t take seriously what Jesus had to say about their life before death. He said this was because we don’t believe Jesus is smart.

Much of Dallas Willard’s life was devoted to trying to get followers of Jesus to recognise that Jesus was smart and take what he had to say about how to live their lives seriously.

He wrote about Jesus that

“Jesus is not just nice, he is brilliant.

He is the smartest man who ever lived. He is now supervising the entire course of world history (Rev 1:5) while simultaneously preparing the rest of the universe for our future role in it (John 14:2). He always has the best information on everything and certainly also on the things that matter most in human life.” Dallas Willard

As a church we are going to be focusing our attention for the next couple of months on the Sermon on the Mount.

Why? Because Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount shows us how smart he really is. In Matthew 5-7 Jesus brings us reliable information about who we are as human beings, why we are here and what the humanly appropriate motives are for doing whatever we do.

Jesus in that famous sermon teaches us how to live. He teaches us how to make choices with the goal of glorifying God by being good and doing good to human beings by embodying and expressing the Kingdom of God.

Millions of disciples have discovered that under His instruction the most exhilarating kind of life imaginable, no wonder Jesus called his message the Good News of the Kingdom of God.

The tragedy is that perhaps more of those who have claimed to be his disciples have never discovered this life, because they have not taken Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount Seriously.

You see if we think Jesus is smart, we will take him seriously. We will take seriously what he says about life and how to live it. It is just not possible to trust Jesus, or anyone else, in matters where we do not believe him to be competent.

Our commitment to Jesus can stand on no other foundation than a recognition that he is the one who knows the truth about our lives and our universe.

For those of us who claim to be his followers this frankly is where the rubber hits the road.

The question is do I really take Jesus seriously as my Lord, or don’t I?

 If you trust him with your life after death, shouldn’t you be able to trust him with your life before death?

I believe we can trust Jesus. I believe he won’t let us don’t or lead us astray. I believe he knows what he’s talking about–he’s really smart.

I believe we should take Jesus seriously

That’s what we are going to be doing over the next couple of months as we look seriously at what Jesus had to say about life and how to live it.

Jesus is smart, it’s time to take him seriously.

Join us at Westlake as we do just that, starting this Sunday