Humanistic relativism teaches us that, because we are finite, we cannot possibly know if something is absolute. Because we are finite, we cannot possibly really, truly know anything. And because we cannot really know anything, therefore nothing is absolute.
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Episode 9: Charlie Kirk, Chairs & Washing Machines
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This message comes out of events around Charlie Kirk’s assassination on Wednesday, 10 September 2025 (American time). But on Wednesday, 10 September (Australian time), at about 7.45 in the morning, I was at the gym thinking about my sermon that I was going to preach for that Sunday.
Now, as a church, one thing that we do very regularly is we will sit down, we will retreat, and we will just spend time praying, saying, “Lord, what are You saying to the church? What is Your Word in season?” I do not want to just preach to a lectionary, and I am also not interested in preaching my hobby horse.
I want to hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church in that season, for that time. And for us at Hills Baptist, we have spent a great deal of time with this phrase: simply, “Come and see”. And so, as we have sought the Lord as to what that Word in season would be, it is “Come and see”, and that has led us to the Gospel of John.
We have been teaching through the Gospel of John. It just so happened that my sermon text for the Sunday immediately after the events of Wednesday, 10 September, was John 8:31–59.
The Word of God is powerful and is a two-edged sword, able to penetrate to dividing soul and spirit. This was the text chosen months in advance. This was planned in the spreadsheet as we prayed and said, “Lord, what are You saying to the Church in season?” And it just so happened that this was it — that terrible week.
“To the Jews who had believed Jesus, He said, ‘If you hold to My teaching, you are really My disciples. Then you will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free.’
“They answered Him, ‘We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can You say that we shall be set free?’”
Now, I just want you to pause. I want you to underline that, and I want you to think about that. He is talking to the Jewish people at the Feast of Tabernacles, which is the freedom festival that they celebrated — that God had provided for Israel in the wilderness for forty years after they had been delivered from four hundred years of slavery.
“We are Abraham’s descendants. We have never been slaves of anyone.”
We will get to that in a minute.
“How can You say that we shall be set free?”
“Jesus replied, ‘I tell you the Truth. Everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know you are Abraham’s descendants. You are ready to kill Me because you have no room for My Word. I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you do what you have heard from your father.’”
“Then the Jews answered Jesus, ‘Aren’t we right in saying that You are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?’”
“‘I am not possessed by a demon,’ said Jesus, ‘but I honour My Father, and you dishonour Me. I am not seeking glory for Myself, but there is One Who seeks it, and He is the Judge. I tell you the Truth, if anyone keeps My Word, he will never see death.’”
“At this, the Jews exclaimed, ‘Now we know that You are demon-possessed. Abraham died, and so did the prophets, yet You say that if anyone keeps Your Word, he will never taste death. Are You greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do You think You are?’”
“Jesus replied, ‘If I glorify Myself, My glory means nothing. My Father, Whom you claim as your God, is the One Who glorifies Me. Though you do not know Him, I know Him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know Him and keep His Word. Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing My day. He saw it and was glad.’”
“‘You are not yet fifty years old,’ the Jews said to Him, ‘and You have seen Abraham!’”
“‘I tell you the Truth,’ Jesus answered, ‘before Abraham was born, I am!’”
Listen to this:
“At this, they picked up stones to stone Him, but Jesus hid Himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.”
At 7.45am Adelaide time on Wednesday, the 10th of September — twenty hours before Charlie Kirk was assassinated — I paused from a bench press rep, having been thinking about this text for the previous few days, really weeks, and this is what I made note of.
“In this text, we see Truth confronting lies, and therefore true light exposing the true nature of darkness. What begins as a rational, logical discussion exposes a lie in the foundations of the audience’s identity.
“Rather than recognising Truth, repenting of false beliefs, and receiving the Truth, they revert first to insult, accusation, and mockery, in a bid to silence the Truth that confronts them. When that does not work, because real Truth cannot be silenced, there is only one thing left for them to do: to try and kill the Truth before the Truth kills the lie in them.”
And then I wrote this title: “The One Where They Try and Assassinate Truth”.
It was a very strange feeling, twenty-four hours later, to be back in that exact same gym, talking to the manager of that gym. He is not a Christian, but he came up to me with tears in his eyes to tell me that a hero of his had passed away. And I said, “Oh, who’s that — a family friend?” He said, “Oh no, it’s a social media influencer.”
I just looked him in the eye and said, “Charlie Kirk.” And he said, “Yeah, do you know Charlie Kirk?” I answered, “Bro, I love Charlie Kirk. I pastor the church just down the road.”
We had an hour-long conversation, and I got to share the gospel with him. He is at this point where he recognises that there is a Truth the world is trying to hide and silence.
I cannot help but think that the Bible has something to say about that. I got up on the following Sunday and read that text. I talked a bit about Charlie Kirk. I had a few people get a bit upset about that — but we are at Hills Baptist, so most people know what is coming.
Today, as we have sat here, we have heard a lot. A lot of incredible speakers, and a lot of information that we need to process.
One word that continues to come up over and over and over again is this singular word: Truth. And I cannot help but wonder if, actually, the salve to the ills of our society is for society to rediscover and reclaim Truth. You see, what we are facing right now is nothing new.
There is nothing new under the sun. There has always been a battle around Truth and lies. Back in John 8, Jesus is addressing this whole idea of Truth and lies.
But actually, what Jesus is addressing is deeper than that. He talks about how they believe their father, the devil, who is the father of lies. So He is actually saying that this whole wrestle between truth and lies goes all the way back to Genesis 3 in the garden, with the very first lie:
“Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
And in that moment, humanity — Adam and Eve — had a choice. They could either believe the God Who created all things good and had given them a very good existence. Up to that point in time, all they had encountered was goodness. Or they could choose to submit to His rule and reign and His Word, which He’d spoken and said:
“You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Now, up until that point, they had not known evil. All they had known was good.
And so God is saying:
“If you choose to reject My lordship; if you choose to make yourself god and say that your desires are greater than My desires, that you are the ones who should be able to determine right from wrong, that you are the ones who should say what is true and what is a lie — if you do that, you will experience evil. Evil will enter your existence.”
And what we have found for humanity ever since that moment is that we have known good and evil. There are signs of the goodness of God. There is evidence of the goodness and the glory and the wonder of God all through creation. When you see God changing people’s lives, we encounter the goodness of God. But we also look around and we see evil.
We have heard it in what Joanna Howe was talking about. And so we now live in this reality. But it is not new, friends, is what I am trying to say. It is an age-old battle that we are in. And it is something that I believe — speaking as a pastor — that we have let go too far, and that too many pulpits, as Dave would say, have stepped back when we should have stepped forward.
And so, in John 8, Jesus is talking to a Jewish audience at the Feast of Tabernacles about the nature of Truth. And in this moment, as we have seen, where He says, “If you know the Truth, the Truth will set you free,” and these people say, “Well, we are sons of Abraham. We have never been slaves to anyone,” straightaway we see a lie — but it is not the lie we think.
You see, it is so blatantly obvious, given that they were at the Feast of Tabernacles, celebrating the freedom that God brought from Egypt, that they cannot be talking about the surface-level reality that they had been enslaved to other nations. They cannot possibly be doing that. Otherwise, it makes no sense.
And then Jesus hits the nail on the head. Every time you want to know what Jesus is really addressing, just follow His teaching. He immediately talks about being slaves to sin. And in doing so, He exposes the lie that they have believed.
They had believed that although they had been held captive to a whole bunch of other nations over time, they believed that, despite that captivity, they had always been free because they were free in God — based on their genealogy.
That they could be enslaved to Egypt, they could be held captive to Rome, as they currently were, but because they were sons of Abraham, they were destined to eternal freedom in God. And Jesus just looks at that lie, names it, and says,
“No, no, no, no, no. If you want to be truly free from the curse of sin and death, there is only one way you can experience that freedom — and that is to come to Me, the One Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
Jesus teaches unequivocally and unashamedly that there is an absolute Truth.
We are living in a world right now where the pervading worldview within secular culture is what you would call humanistic relativism. Humanistic relativism is the worldview that basically says, “I get to determine right and wrong for myself. I am the one who says what is true and what is not true.” Humanistic relativism has believed a lie: that we are not bound to sin — the same lie the Jews believed, and the same lie that Adam and Eve believed in the garden — that we get to be God.
Let me put it this way. This, on stage beside me, is a chair.
This is a chair.
Here is what the humanistic relativist does:
“Is it? How can we know? Because, at some point, all of us are going to leave this room. And because none of us are here — because we are all finite — how can we really know that, when none of us are around, this chair does not change its molecular structure and become something else? We cannot really know that. And therefore, the chair can be whatever it wants to be.
Who is to say that this is not actually a table? It has the properties of a table. It has a broad base of support and a flat system, and I might choose to put a plate on it and eat off it. That makes it a table.
Or who is to say it is not a desk? Because it has a broad base of support and it has a flat surface, and if I want to sit on the ground and put my laptop there, it could be a desk.
And if that chair, as you say, could be a table or it could also be a desk, who is to say it cannot be a washing machine?”
Do you see the logic?
The humanistic relativist begins with one small step that makes logical sense. So we all kind of go, okay, yes, I suppose you could call that a table, and I suppose you could call it a desk. And because I have ceded to those ideas, who am I to say that it is not a washing machine? And the argument can go on and on, right?
And here is what has happened in the Church. Because we believe that love is universal acceptance of all things, and the highest value that we can place as a Christian is to be “nice”, we have forgotten that Jesus, all through John 8, is talking about Truth in love.
The Gospel of John, when it begins, tells us that we have seen His glory — the glory of the One and only Son from the Father — full of grace and Truth. Read John 8. It begins with grace, because it is all about Jesus revealing His glory, and it ends with Truth.
Jesus is always saying — like He says to the adulterous woman:
“Does no one condemn you? Then neither do I. Go and leave your life of sin.”
And what the Church has done is we have stepped back and said, “I do not want to offend anyone. I do not want to hurt anyone.” And so, if you want to believe this is a washing machine, rather than acknowledging the fact that this just does not have the plumbing to be a washing machine, and standing up and naming that to be true, we have stepped back and said, “Hey, you are not hurting anyone.”
But the moment the Church stepped back and said, “We are not hurting anyone — they can think that if they want to think that, that is their Truth,” what has happened is that it has infiltrated society. It has infiltrated school systems. And you draw the metaphorical plumb line, and you can see where we are headed.
When what the Church should have done is exactly that — it should have stepped up. It should have got the physicist in. It should have got the biochemical engineer in. And they should have stood up and said:
“Actually, all of the evidence points to the fact that this chair cannot demolecularise overnight. It is what it is, and it will always be this.”
And there is unequivocal evidence — bring the evidence forward, right? And then what we can do is this: we actually have the One Who made the chair. We have the Word of the One Who made the chair — if you are tracking with me — Who is able to stand there and declare, “No, no, I made this to be a chair.”
And yes, it has some properties that could be used as a table or could be used as a desk. But as the creator of this thing, I can tell you that it will best fulfil its purpose when used as a chair. When someone chooses to put their derriere on the chair, lean back, and experience the support of said chair — that is when this thing is operating in its full purpose.
And anything short of that is not what it was created to be.
Friends, we have the Word of God. Jesus says:
“If you are My disciples, you will obey My Word.”
He has given us His Word. He has given us His Spirit. And so we have a mandate.
We have this mandate that we are a people of the Truth.
You know, the word that is used in this text is a Greek word — aletheia (𝛼𝜆𝜂𝜃𝜖𝜄𝛼). It speaks to an objective, universal standard that is consistent under any matter of consideration. And Jesus uses this word, or a derivative of it, around thirty times in the Gospel.
Here is what I am saying to you. Jesus proclaimed absolute Truth. He revealed that He is the means by which absolute Truth is found. And He said that if we are His disciples — the Church, followers of Jesus — we have a choice.
We can reject the Truth, and we can say, “Well, I want to determine right and wrong for myself,” and buy into humanistic relativism. Or we can actually take up the mantle that Charlie Kirk has left us. And it is not just him — there are many, many, many people all around the world. It is just that he was the famous one, the very public-facing one — where we proclaim Truth in love.
We recognise that love is not the universal acceptance of all things. Love is actually wanting the best for someone in the highest and purest way. That means helping them understand that if God has made them for a particular purpose, in a particular way, then they will best fulfil that purpose by living out their identity in Him — not trying to be a table; not trying to be a desk; not trying to be a washing machine. But being who they were created to be.
And so, what are we to do as a church? First and foremost we have to admit that, as a church, we have actually believed some lies.
Admit
We have to admit that, as a church, we have not fulfilled the mandate of Truth in love. Some of us have become hateful, maybe. And we have brought the Truth, but we have brought it more as a sledgehammer than actually meeting people where they are at.
And sometimes the church has gone the complete other way. When someone has come up to us and said, “How dare you say that this is not a chair? What a bigot. That is hate speech. You are a washing machinophobe,” and when that accusation has come, we have actually recoiled — “Oh no, no, no, no, no. I am not a washing machinophobe. I love washing machines. I truly do.”
When actually, the loving thing to do is to say this:
“Declaring the reality of something does not mean I am afraid of it, and it does not make me hateful. The fact that I have a heart for you means I love you. But love is wanting the best for someone in the highest and purest way.”
We actually have to admit, friends, that we have not been who God has called us to be. And a part of that admitting is to repent. And as we repent, we move from admitting to submitting.
Submit
We have to submit to Truth. We have to bow the knee. We have to not take of the proverbial fruit of our culture. We have to stand in the Truth of God as revealed in the Scriptures by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Commit
And then the third thing we have to do is simply this: commit to the Truth, which means to advocate: to fight for Truth. Submit means to come to events like this, right? It means to go to the rallies that Joanna is talking about. It means to actually be aware of what is going on and to not live in a naïve Christian little bubble, but to get out of the bubble and to do exactly what Daniel did when he was in exile — he spoke the language of the Babylonians, but he did not eat their fruit.
We do not need more Christian politicians. What we need is more politicians who will advocate for Christian moral values, advocate for Truth. We need politicians, and we need the people of God, to stand up and to speak the language of the culture, to know what is going on, but to not eat its fruit.
And as we do that — as we admit, as we submit, and as we commit — I believe with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength that God will do what He has promised to do, and He will build His church.
In my own church — and probably for many of you in your churches, I do not know what you are seeing — but we are literally seeing people just walking off the street with zero understanding. Someone came in the other day and said to me, “So, do I have to buy a ticket?” Zero background in faith. Zero understanding of what the church is, how it operates — but hungry for Truth.
And especially in Gen Z. And all the stats are showing it. We do not have time to talk about the quiet revival and all the stats, but there is a move of God happening in that generation. Why? Because they are the generation that has grown up being taught that Truth does not exist. They are the generation who have grown up being told that they have no innate, intrinsic value. Therefore, there is no worth. Therefore, there is no purpose. And therefore, there is no hope.
And when you grow up like that, it is fun for about five minutes, right?
The Lord gave me a picture probably a couple of months back. One night I saw this picture of this generation swimming in the ocean — kind of like Port Elliot, out there, just swimming in the ocean. They are out there swimming around, having a great time. And then, all of a sudden, the waves start to come.
And then the waves get bigger, and they get bigger, and they get bigger. And these people are swimming in the ocean, and they realise something — they have no bedrock to put their feet on.
And so what was fun — having anything go, “I can do whatever I want to do,” and “there is no purpose,” and “there is no meaning” — all of a sudden becomes hopelessness. They are out there thinking, “I am drowning in these waves. I am drowning in what culture is throwing at me, and I am desperate for something to stand on.”
And so what the Church has is the Rock. We stand on the Rock of Christ. He is Truth. He is solid. He is a firm foundation.
This generation is hungry for something to stand on. So would we proclaim it?
And if we would admit the Truth, submit to Truth, and commit to Truth, just maybe — just maybe — we will see South Australia won for Jesus.
Who knows how quickly? A handful of people committed to Truth over a few hundred years changed the entire Roman Empire. Because it is not by might, it is not by power, it is by the Holy Spirit.
But He is looking for a people who would stand. I believe that is the mandate on the Church right now — to stand.
Let us pray:
Lord, I thank You for Your Word, and I thank You that Your Word is Truth. Lord, we are blessed to be in a nation where we are still free. So Lord, let us not abuse that freedom to serve our own self-indulgences and to rest in our own Christian bubbles.
I thank You for every person here, because it is clearly not their heart to do that. Lord, let us be a voice of one calling. Lord, revive that John the Baptist spirit in Your church — to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour as You come to move.
Lord, we love You and we bless You. And I just pray right now for a holy strengthening. I want to pray over pastors — pastors in this state — that there would be a revival of Truth and a fresh conviction not to bend the Word to tickle ears, but that we would listen to Paul’s charge to Timothy: to preach the Word in season and out of season, to correct, rebuke, and encourage.
Lord, only You can do it. So do it in us, we pray. And change our hearts, in Jesus’ Name.
