Many people know that phrase. Very few people know the philosophy that spawned it. Nietzsche summarized it in one sentence: “The things that you think you know, you don’t know.” You think you know there is a God, but there isn’t. You think you have experienced God, you haven’t. You think that God is the creator and sustainer of all things. He isn’t. “The things that you think you know, you don’t know.”

That underlying philosophy led Nietzsche to make that startling statement that startles us even today, “God is dead.”

Fewer people yet don’t realize that Nietzsche’s philosophy serves as the rallying cry of our culture and influences and infects the growth of the Church in our day. The modern Church growth movements build upon it. “The things that you think you know, you don’t know.”

More surprising yet to many, Jesus Christ refuted and contradicted that philosophy centuries before Nietzsche even took his first breath. It happened on a Sabbath day in Capernaum, a city located on the northeast corner of the Sea of Galilee.

Jesus visited Capernaum many times, and he had many journeys throughout Galilee ministering to the people there. This particular Sabbath morning he went into the synagogue, the local place for teaching the Scriptures.

As the Lord Jesus left the synagogue, he encountered a crowd of people. Thousands of people had come from Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan. They flocked to see and to hear Jesus and to have him heal them of their diseases and demons. The size of the crowd prompted Jesus to use a boat for his platform.

The plain outside of Capernaum provided plenty of room for the thousands of people who had come. Just beyond, outside of the crowd the Lord Jesus had a view of all of the fields that surrounded the city of Capernaum: lush fields of corn, well trodden pathways among them, clumps of thorns scattered throughout the crops, and the birds that came and took away the seed on the well worn paths.