YOU ARE SMARTER THAN MOST
On Judgment Day you and I will be in heaven. But unfortunately there will be many more people who will end up in hell. And there’s going to be a wide variety of people there: From doctors, lawyers, scientists, professors, CEOs… to the unemployed, the uneducated, the mentally challenged. It won’t matter what title they have in front of their names. It won’t matter what initials they can place behind them. It won’t matter what amount of schooling they’ve completed or when they dropped out. It won’t matter what degree they have earned or what crimes they have broken. It won’t matter what achievements they’ve accomplished or what talents they’ve wasted. Without faith in their Savior, nothing else will matter. Without a knowledge of the God-man who gave up his life for their sins all of their successes or failures, all of their intelligence or stupidity will be inconsequential. Because the cross will be the only success that counts. And faith in the one who died on that cross will be the only knowledge necessary.
There are people in this world that know a lot of things. There are individuals whose minds are blessed in such tremendous ways that they can remember a seemingly countless array of information, people who can pick up anything and everything the very first time they hear it or try it, people whose minds and talents work together amazingly well to produce amazing results. But some of these very people are the ones who will not make it to heaven. With all of their intelligence and with all of their wisdom and with all of their learning, they will die ignorant. They will die without the only thing they need to know.
But not you. You are smarter than most. You are more intelligent than you may think. In fact, you are more brilliant than the majority of people in this world. Because Scripture says that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” Faith in your Savior is where intelligence starts. Knowledge of your Lord is where wisdom begins. And so without it, without faith in Jesus and what he did, everything else will always be blurred. Everything else in this world will be out of focus and strangely skewed because there would be no point of reference from which to see things clearly. Even if a believer and an unbeliever see and experience the exact same things at the exact same time, only the believer will be able to see things from the correct angle.
Consider Cain and Abel. Both sons of the very first couple, Adam and Eve. Both had the opportunity to speak to God in person. Both given various gifts that they could give back to the Lord. But one believed in his Savior and the other didn’t. And so when it was time to give the offering, Abel saw it as an opportunity to thank the Lord for everything he had done for him and he presented his offering with joy. Cain did not fear the Lord; he did not believe in his Savior. And so he begrudgingly brought his offering with disgust and he eventually murdered his own brother out of envy. They had the same upbringing and the same opportunities, but only the believer had a correct understanding of the situation at hand.
Or think of the apostle Peter and Judas Iscariot. Both handpicked disciples of Jesus himself. Both witnesses of his miracles and preaching and arrest and suffering. But one believed in Jesus as his Savior, the other did not. And so when Peter realized that he had sinned against Christ by denying who he was in the courtyard of the high priest, he repented of his sins and clung to Jesus for forgiveness. But when Judas became aware of the gravity of his sins, he fell into despair and hung himself in sorrow because he did not know that the forgiveness Jesus would soon earn on that cross would be for him too. Both of these disciples had the same chance and had been taught the same things, but only one could see past his sins to his Savior. Throughout Scripture believers and unbelievers have seen and experienced the exact same things in completely different ways. And that happens still today.
Think of the difference between the way you as a Christian look at this world and the way an unbeliever looks at it. You see a world that was created by God himself. You see an earth that was once made perfect but corrupted by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. You see a universe that was made just for us and will one day be destroyed to lead to something better in heaven. But an unbeliever, someone who does not know Christ, will look at this same world and come to a completely different conclusion. They see a world not created by God, but by chance. They see an earth not corrupted in ancient times by a couple named Adam and Eve, but rather a round rotating ball governed simply by the laws of nature and survival of the fittest. They do not imagine anything after this world ends if they think this world will end at all. An unbeliever’s point of view is almost opposite that of a Christian.
Even the way you as a Christian handle difficulties is different than the way an unbeliever does. You have confidence that the Lord will turn out everything for your good; an unbeliever is filled with anxiety. You are sure that God is still with you through it all; an unbeliever feels all alone. You are completely convinced that whatever happens God’s will is being carried out; while an unbeliever can do nothing but despair when life is difficult and unbearable. Unbelievers will always see things through sin colored glasses because they do not have the foundation of Christ on which to stand. Without Christ their assumptions will always be misdirected; their conclusions will always be off base; and their motivation to do anything will always be selfishly driven in some way. And that happens because they do not know their God who is behind it all. They do not know their Savior who has fixed it all. That’s why you are smarter than most. You actually know your Lord. You are privileged to believe in your Savior. And that makes you brilliant compared to the vast majority of people on this earth.
Of course, it’s one thing to know something; it’s quite another to put that knowledge into practice. We are certainly spiritually wise because of the faith the Lord has blessed us with, but we often act like the dumbest people on earth. We may know that God is with us in any and every situation, but that doesn’t stop us from worrying about the minor and trivial things of this life. We may know that everything on this earth will pass away and heaven is our true and eternal home, but that doesn’t prevent us from getting caught up in the wants and desires of this life at times. We may know what God asks us to do as Christians but that’s doesn’t always mean we do it. And that’s not very smart, is it? If we know exactly what we are supposed to do from the clear words of Scripture and we don’t do it… that’s not only unwise, that’s stupid! That’s acting like an idiot! That’s acting like a sinner. Not doing what God tells us to do is not behaving like the intelligent Christians that we are; that is ignoring the knowledge that we have been given and acting on our own whims and wishes. It is embarrassing when we who are so wise in faith fall into the stupidity of sin time and time again. It shouldn’t happen; we’re too smart for that; we should know better; but it happens all time.
It even happened to Solomon. The man who wrote this very proverb that we are studying this morning, the man who was not only wise in faith but wise by human standards as well - even Solomon himself fell into the stupidity of sin in different ways. One of his faults had to do with women. The Lord had established marriage as a blessing to be shared between one man and one woman, but Solomon conveniently ignored that divine arrangement and acquired a total of 1000 wives and concubines. The Lord then warned him not to turn away and follow other gods, but that is exactly what Solomon ended up doing anyway. He worshiped the false gods of his wives and forgot what the Lord had done for him. Solomon did not always put his spiritual wisdom or even his earthly wisdom into practice. He often acted like a fool.
And so the question sometimes becomes: Did Solomon die a believer? I would like to think so. He wrote the book of Ecclesiastes towards the end of his life and he wrote it from a Christian perspective, and so it is likely that Solomon was a believer at the time of his death. Which means he is in heaven right now. Despite his foolishness, despite his sinful idiocy Solomon is in heaven right now. Not because he always acted so wisely of course, but because of the simple knowledge he had in his Savior.
We may act foolishly ourselves from time to time. We may be sinfully stupid on occasion. We may be downright dumb when it comes to acting like God’s child. But that will not negate our salvation. Because our eternal life does not depend on how wisely we act or how Christian we prove ourselves to be; it depends on the one who has given us the wisdom to believe in his Son. And that spiritual knowledge that we have in Jesus as our Savior is not something we gained by ourselves or something that we logically found out to be true or something that we were just naturally born with. This faith was given to us as a gift by the Holy Spirit through the Word of God. “We speak a message of wisdom among the mature,” Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians, “but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age… No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and… God has revealed it to us by his Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:6,7,10). The wisdom of faith is a gift from the Holy Spirit himself. Those who have it are wise. Those who believe in Jesus are wise. Those who have a sure hope in heaven are wise. Those who trust in the Lord for their complete forgiveness are wise. You are wise. Your fellow Christians are wise. And no one else is.
And so in the end who is smarter: The chairman of the company who ends up in hell because he is not a Christian or the assembly line worker who ends up in heaven because he does know Christ? Who is smarter: The best-selling author and entrepreneur who ends up in hell because of her unbelief or the stay-at-home mom who ends up in heaven on account of her faith in the Savior? Who is smarter: The accomplished physicist who has traveled the world and has won countless awards and has taught at numerous universities and has authored several scientific theories but who does not know Jesus or the three year old child who can’t tie his own shoes but can sing “Jesus loves me” at the top of his lungs? Who is smarter? Who has more wisdom when it is all said and done?
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” Thank your God that he has blessed you with the spiritual wisdom to believe in something that you cannot see, that no one can prove, and that nothing can explain. You actually believe in a God who became a man. You believe in a wooden cross that soaked up your sins in someone else’s blood. You believe in a tomb that wasn’t able to hold its only corpse. And you are wise for believing that. You are smarter than most. Now continue to grow in that knowledge of your Savior so that you do not let that wisdom slip away.
Amen.
“Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.” - 2 Peter 3:18
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