Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 10 · January 10
Where They Had Been
“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.”
When did you last back out of a conversation about God, and what reason did you give yourself on the way home? The council in Jerusalem had its own explanation for Peter and John, and the words they used are often misread today: "Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled." In the Greek, "unlearned" means without letters, that is, without formal schooling as a rabbi and without ever training under a known teacher. "Ignorant" translates the Greek word that later gave English the word "idiot," but in their day it described a private person, someone outside the profession, an ordinary man with no official position. Nobody there was calling them stupid. The council was noticing that neither man had any credentials, yet they were arguing anyway, and they were winning.
Scripture keeps a long record of people like this. When Amos is told to stop prophesying at Bethel, he answers, "I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son; but I was an herdman, and a gatherer of sycomore fruit." Moses at the burning bush makes the same objection from the other end of a life: "I am not eloquent," he says, "I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue." Paul turns it into a pattern when he tells the church at Corinth that "not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called." In the end the council settled on the company these men had kept: "they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus." The man who had been healed was standing right beside them, so nobody could say anything against it.
A warning runs alongside this, because people sometimes use the verse as an excuse not to learn, and it gives no such excuse. Peter was untrained, but he was never untaught. He had spent about three years in the closest teaching anyone has ever had, with Jesus Himself. And when Apollos arrived, "an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures," Aquila and Priscilla still "expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly," and he let them. Having no training is a fine place to start from, but it is a poor place to settle down in. The good news is that what the council noticed is still open to you: time spent with Jesus, in His word and in prayer. So the next time you feel too unqualified to speak about God, remember what the council finally noticed. People may not see any training in you, but they can see that you have been with Jesus.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 10 is Heart Surgery (Ezekiel 36:26).