They Noticed the Two of Them Were Not Educated Men

There is a way he says the word when it comes up, and he can hear himself do it.

Somebody at work mentions something and he says, oh, I do not really get into all that, in a tone that makes it sound like a preference. It is not a preference. It is a fence, and he built it, and it works so well that people move on immediately.

Underneath the tone is a thing he has believed since he was about fourteen, which is that this is somebody else's subject. That there is a course, or a background, or a way of thinking that other people were given and he was not.

He has never checked whether that is true. He has never asked one person about it directly.

And the fence is doing more than keeping the conversation away. It is keeping him from a book he actually wants to read, which he has never once said out loud, including to himself.

The council could not account for two fishermen

There is a scene in Acts where the most educated body in the country is trying to make sense of what it is hearing.

Two men have been arrested. They are answering questions in front of a formal assembly, and the record is careful about who is in the room.

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus. (Acts 4:13, King James Version)

Unlearned and ignorant men.

That is the council's assessment, not an insult from the writer. It means they had not been through the schools. It is a statement about training.

And then they marveled, which is a strong word. The trained men could not explain what the untrained ones were saying.

The explanation Luke gives is not that the fishermen were secretly clever. It is that they had been with Jesus.

You are not short of the thing that produced that. Acts 4 records the assessment and the marvelling in the same verse, and it is the Holy Spirit, poured out on those same men one chapter earlier, who is the reason for it.

Jesus thanked God that it was hidden from the clever

There is a prayer Jesus prays out loud that lands awkwardly on a room full of trained people, and it is worth reading exactly as it stands.

I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. (Matthew 11:25)

He thanks Him for it.

He is not saying learning is bad. He is saying that this particular thing is not distributed along that axis, and that He is glad about it.

Babes is a word for people with no standing and no training. That is who it is revealed to, in His own words, in a prayer somebody wrote down.

You are in the category He named when He said revealed. Matthew 11 puts the hiding and the revealing in one sentence and thanks God for the arrangement, and it is His Spirit who makes an old prayer land on a man who built a fence at fourteen.

God took a prophet off a hillside

There is a moment where somebody challenges a man's right to speak, and the answer is one of the flattest in the Bible.

Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son; but I was an herdman, and a gatherer of sycomore fruit: And the LORD took me as I followed the flock. (Amos 7:14-15)

I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son.

He is saying he has no training and no family in the trade. There was a system for producing prophets and he did not come through it.

Then: the LORD took me as I followed the flock. He was working. That is where he was when it happened.

And the book has his name on it, and it is still being read.

You are the sort of person He has taken off a hillside before. Amos 7 has him naming his lack of credentials out loud and then naming who took him, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old defense feel like it is about somebody in work clothes.

The light lands on the ordinary person

There is a promise in the long psalm about the word, and it names its target.

The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple. (Psalm 119:130)

Unto the simple.

The word means uncomplicated. Plain. The ordinary man with no equipment and no background.

And the light is at the entrance. It is what happens when the words get in, rather than what a man arrives at after enough years.

Whoever wrote that could have said unto the diligent, or unto the learned. He said unto the simple.

You are named as the target rather than the exception. Psalm 119 picks the word for an ordinary person and puts the light at the door, and it is His Spirit who makes an old promise stop sounding like it was written for somebody else.

Paul describes the room he was writing to

There is a passage where Paul tells a church to look around at itself, and it is not flattering and it is not meant to be.

For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. (1 Corinthians 1:26)

Not many wise. Not many mighty. Not many noble.

He is describing the actual composition of the room. This is not encouragement, it is a census.

And then he says God chose it that way on purpose, to confound the people the system ranks highly.

You are the composition of the room rather than a person let in at the edge of it. 1 Corinthians 1 describes the membership plainly and then says the choosing was deliberate, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old census land on a break room table.