Easter at Rock Point 2026

Hey. It's good to be here. If if you're new, I'm Bill. Nice to meet you. And, you know, I was thinking about this.

My my my dad, when he would coach me, coach me in sports, coach me in life, sometimes he would he would come up and ask me like, hey, why did you do that when I was doing something? And I go, don't know. I just felt like it just seemed like goes like, uh-uh hunch? And he goes, oh, you mean like intuition?

Go, yeah, yeah, that's it. I got intuition. And he goes, well, know, there is a good intuition that they've discovered. It's really from your brain subconsciously recognizes patterns and truth that it's seen before and connects the dots for you in those moments. And and a lot of times you end up making a good decision.

That's that's psychologically good intuition. But my dad said, but most people what they think intuition is and what I see them doing is, it's just confidence without any information.

And he goes, that's what you did, son. And and that usually doesn't work out well. So when I've heard him say that, and I thought about that. A lot of intuitiveness is confidence without information. And the and the reality is my dad felt like, you know, a lot of people, we live that way.

We think it's just intuitive. I'm figuring out life. And and we make decisions with confidence without information or truth. Sometimes we're just confident about something, but we don't really have any truth behind it. And we make a lot of decisions doing that.

And and and and there's actually a really good modern example that you can go read about and see all the time. We call it Florida Man.

Yeah. You guys ever if you haven't, you're missing out on some fun. It's real news stories because somebody realized, you know, and they started putting this on the Internet, that there's so many stories in in in Florida that news starts up. Florida Man tries to like, for example, Florida Man

attempts to take a selfie with an alligator. That's one of them. And and literally, not like with it behind him, he went up and put his arm around it. And now he can only put one arm around people anymore. Confidence without information, without truth. Another one said, Florida man hides from police in a house

that's owned by a policeman. Confidence without information. It didn't work out too well for him. Another one said Florida man calls the police and asked them to investigate who stole his meth and get it back to him. Confidence

without truth. It didn't turn out too well for him. But one of the craziest ones happened in 2023 when the coast guard was getting preparing for a hurricane that was on its way, but they got sidetracked because they got radio message said a a fishing boat saw a guy in what looked like a hamster bubble wheel

thing running in it, trying to go across. Was about 70 miles offshore. And and so they had to go investigate. And I actually have pictures of that one. There he is. And then this next one shows the, the next picture shows the the coast guard trying to talk him out of it because he wouldn't get out.

And this guy had basically was so committed that he he was going to run inside of that thing and go to England from from he wanted to go to London from from Florida,

and he'd only got 70 miles. He already looked like he was dehydrated because it got over a 120 degrees in that thing during the day. I mean, wrap yourself in plastic and go stand in the sun and see and then jog and see how that works out for you. But he was so committed. He had spent his entire life savings, over $120,000

to build this. Spent years of his life, was so committed. So you gotta give him credit. He was committed.

He he dedicated. He put his time and his money and his effort to him, and he wouldn't even come out of it. He threatened them. He's like, I'm gonna blow it up. Said these two wires will blow it. Because he didn't wanna go out. He's like, I I am so

convinced that this is my purpose in life. This is the thing I'm gonna do that's gonna bring me happiness, and I'm gonna succeed. So much confidence that it took him over a day to get him to come out of that thing. Man, you give he was all in, super confident, but no truth behind it. He wasn't gonna make it to England.

He was gonna die. Matter of fact, he tried to tell him, I'm doing this for charity. And the Coast Guard said, no, we're the charity. We're showing up to save you because you're gonna die if you don't come out of that thing. And and and and the reality is we laugh at that. We're a little bit confused. But but you know,

I think my dad was right in that I think that actually describes us as humanity. I think we tend to make a lot of decisions and we tend to look for a win in life.

And we're chasing this thing that we think, this is where I'm gonna find life. This is where I'm gonna be happy. This is where I'm gonna be content. This is what I need to get. This is where I need to go. And it's a lot of confidence with no truth. And

the Bible says there's a lot of things that seem right to man, but it ends in death. And and we're not gonna win. We're not gonna win. In other words, we're out there trying to chase what we think the win in life is. And and and what Easter shows us is we don't chase the win, we need to trust the one who did win.

And that's what I wanna look at for a few minutes today. This big idea that simply says this, Easter shows us that Jesus won because we can't.

Jesus won because we can't. So what does that mean? I wanna read the the Easter story out of Mark, chapter 16, starting in verse one, and then just talk about it. It says, when Sabbath ended, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome went out and purchased burial spices so they can anoint Jesus' body.

Very early on Sunday morning, just at sunrise, they went to the tomb. On the way they were asking each other, who will roll away the stone,

for us from the entrance to the tomb? So think about how are they going? They they love Jesus. He came and said, I'm the Lord. I'm I'm here to I'm the savior. And and they believed it. They saw his power and they saw all this. But they're going this morning expecting a loss. They they they they

expect to find a body. They're bringing burial spices. They're worried about how they're gonna get the door open to the tomb. They did not expect that Jesus won.

And that's why they end up so surprised because look what happens. It says, but as they arrived, they looked up and saw that the stone which was very large had already been rolled aside. When they entered the tomb, they saw a young man clothed in a white robe sitting on the right side. The women were shocked.

But the angel said, don't be alarmed. You're looking for Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He isn't here. He was he has risen from the dead. Look. This is where they laid his body. Now and an angel is a messenger. So now he's given the message that Jesus told him to give. Now go and tell his disciples, including Peter,

that Jesus is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there, and then here's the kicker, just as he told you before he died. But then it says the women fled the tomb, trembling and bewildered, and they said nothing to anyone because they're too frightened. Think about it.

They went to expect to find a dead body. They get an angel. They hear he's alive, and he gives them a message. Go tell the disciples he's gonna meet you in in in in Galilee, just like he said before he died, and they freak out. He already told them he was gonna do this.

But they're still freaked out. Why? I get it. I think you and I would still. Their brains couldn't process it.

Because Jesus told the disciples themselves, I'm gonna do something. I'm gonna do something. He told Peter. And and and Peter tried to defend him, say, I'm not gonna let anybody hurt you. And he was like, I've already told you this is the plan, but but he didn't do it. And so then he tries to do it. Jesus says, you can't do this for me. You're trying to get a win for me, and you don't understand.

And so then he says, and by the way, you're gonna deny me that you you're gonna deny you even know me three times before a rooster crows. And he goes, I would never do that. Cockadoodleoo. So if you know the story, Peter was that loud mouth leader of the disciples.

And even in this message from the angel, what did he have to say? Go tell the disciples and Peter. So Peter thought Jesus had rejected him because he was trying to get the win for Jesus. So he wasn't even with him.

The angel had to say, Make sure you go find Peter and tell him he wants to meet you in Galilee. I don't know, maybe you're Peter this morning. Maybe you've done some things or you come to church, you're here today, but typically you feel like, yeah, I've blown it. I haven't really trusted the Lord.

I've kind of done dumb things. Or some of you, you're really far off. You just came in here and you, like, told the friends that invited you. You're like, you know, I'm not sure I should walk in a holy place. I think it'll light on fire if I step foot in there. Maybe that's you.

Well, the message that's still for you today, if you're that guy, Peter, you've known the Lord, you've gone to church, you think it's too late for you, is he wants to meet you today. You don't have to be filled with guilt or shame or failure because your goal and my goal is not to get the win.

It's to trust the one who won. And the reason they're freaking out too is the same thing the disciples were. The same reason understand what Jesus did. And I don't think it ever sunk in how many times he told them he was gonna die. It never crossed their mind. You know why? Because dying is not winning.

In every other way, shape, and form we look at in our world, dying is the ultimate loss. You don't come back from it. You can't say, well, I died. I'll get you next season. I mean, the Arizona Cardinals say that all the time, but I keep hoping they'll resurrect someday. Second coming of Kurt Warner or somebody.

But death is not how you win. Also, they had their idea of the win they thought. They thought what Jesus should do. He's gonna save the day. Save our day. Save He didn't come to save the day. He came to save souls, to save us.

And so they weren't expecting that. And maybe you're a little bit that way. You're like, I don't get this Jesus thing. Because we're out chasing a win, but we can't win. We're running after that thing with confidence, but no truth. And the truth is what Jesus did was he won, and he won big.

It says in first Corinthians, when it's describing what this what he did by dying and resurrecting, it says, death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting?

For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power. Trying to make the win yourself, like what Peter was trying to do. But thank God, he gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ. He's the one that won. We don't chase the wind. We trust the one who won

because Jesus won because we can't. And this is great. This was written in in Greek, in that, oh, death, where is your sting? That word there for sting, it means a stinger, a sharp point with that's that's deadly. It's basically a word that means a poisonous thorn. And then it says this poisonous thorn is sin,

and we've all been stung by it. So it's saying, hey, where's the sting of death with Jesus? He's like, he beat it. He didn't just get up. He didn't just wake up. He won. He didn't just cheat death. He defeated it. And that idea for that stinger, that poison, he said, sin is what he beat. And what's sin?

If you come to church, you're like, oh, a bunch of sinners. You get to repent, you sinners, you know? And sin, sin, sin. And we we kinda lose track of what that means. I know what I tend to think it means, which is wrong. I just I naturally, by my nature, wanna go there. I think sin is what you all do.

I just make mistakes every now and again.

But I think I'm not alone in that. I think we all think of other people. We we wanna think, I'm a pretty good person. Yeah. Do some dumb things, but we almost justify our stupid thing. Like, you can get mad. That person's so bad. You know what they did? They go, well, didn't last week you did something really similar? Yeah. But that's different.

I had a reason. They're just horrible people. And I'm like, no, that's not how it works. That word for sin, the English word we use, it goes all the way back to the King James Bible because it was an archery term. So the English word actually describes what the Bible is saying sin is.

The Bible says, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, meaning we're all sinners. But here's what sin meant in archery term to capture what the Bible's trying to say. When you did an archery competition, you like pull the work. You're like, you know, Robin Hood. And you let go.

And you either hit a bull's eye or you sin. That's the only two options. Bull's eye perfection or you missed bullseye in a sense. So it didn't matter. It didn't matter how far you missed. You could miss like a a a a of an inch. Sin.

You could miss the entire target and hit someone in the audience. And you know what that's called? Well, murder, but sin. It is sin.

And so we like to think, well, why would God die? Why because we we kinda underestimate our sin and overestimate everyone else because we think it's this graded on a curve. See, God is perfect and holy. You can only earn it. You can only win the day for yourself if you never sin.

And he describes sin as a poisonous thorn. Does it matter if there is a poisonous thorn that can kill you with one prick? A strychnine poison kills you with a drop. Doesn't matter if you just got scratched once or you fell into an entire bush of it. It doesn't matter.

We are compared to the holiness of God. God can't let us we would die in his presence because of our sin. And so Jesus didn't die to pay off Satan or anything. He died to stay consistent within who he is. He is he is justice. He is holiness. He is righteousness. God is judge. God is perfect. We're not. But fortunately,

he's also love, grace, mercy, and all those things. So he knew that he would judge sin. He has to. He is a God of justice. That's where we get our sins of justice from. And he couldn't just say don't worry about it. So only he could die for us because he could take that penalty. God can be just and judge sin in himself

in showing grace for us. Jesus won because we can't. We can't. And sometimes we don't even chase after it. We are confidently running after our own bubble boat

of saying, This is gonna make me happy. Success will make me happy. Marriage will make me happy. Kids will make me happy. But then you just get married and have kids, you're kind of, Oh, okay. I need another bubble boat.

And then you go and you're like, you have all these things. And those are blessings. God says enjoy these things. They're just not the destination. And then we get and then we're almost like on that hamster wheel in life. And he goes, But Jesus beat death.

And that's what's interesting because it doesn't look like a win to us. Every symbol we have of winning think of a king or a queen, you know, the conquerors or sports or, you know, the trophies you get. Every one of those symbols that they use is powerful. The Heisman Trophy is the guy juking the guy,

straight arming him. You know, you got the Lombardi Trophy. You know, you had all these these great trophies. And and then at Kings, they wear these powerful looking wealthy. Look at how successful and victorious I am. But then you come to Christianity, and I guess somebody's like, Man, our symbols are weird.

Christians are celebrating, and our symbols of victory are are are pain and death. We got a cross, which is a a a a terrible instrument of execution, and then we have a crown of thorns.

Matter of fact, you come in and it's like, wow, we're celebrating victory, and I got this huge crown of thorns above my head that I hope doesn't fall on me.

Why? Why would this be a symbol of victory? People, why are you celebrating it? Because Jesus wore that. And

you understand the soldiers that stuck it on his head were to mock him. Oh, you say you're a king. Here, here's your crown. And this happened to be thorns to give him more agony and do all that. But thorns in scripture means death and sin. So guess what he did? He wore death and sin as a crown

because he defeated it. Exactly.

He popped that thing on as a hat, got up on Sunday morning, and ate death for breakfast. That's why we celebrate those things and remember those things. And here's the point. We were the ones that had crowns of thorns. We were the one that are filled with sin, and he took it upon himself.

He won because we can't. What are you chasing that you think is gonna give life that's gonna give you a win? That's really not. You might be confident, but it's not truth. It's not truth. We need to chase Jesus. We need to remember, put our trust in the one who won.

I was thinking about this. I got back from Africa

just recently, and I've been going for years. And I remember the first time I ever went, I went to Malawi with a friend, and he ran this ministry. And it was like, hey. We're gonna go out. I've never went on anything this crazy. He's like he just ruggedly had a a guide friend of his that was doing this. They had this beat up truck, and we'd go there and drive out. We got into the middle of nowhere, and I got to speak and preach at these villages and meet people. And I'm talking the middle of nowhere. You went in this village,

and it was they lived the same as it was 1,800. Exactly the same. Mud and howls howls. They had to walk the mile to the well every day, couple times a day. It was like biblical times. I mean, it was it was crazy. And I saw and to get to some of these, man, some of the craziest things I saw, I had to go across

rickety Indiana Jones Bridge in our truck. And I go, I don't think a truck should be Gorman's. I'm not even sure if humans should walk over this. This thing looks like it was built in the eighteen hundreds. And it had missing slats, and and and it was tall, and there was there was crocodiles in the river below us.

And and and and and as we were going across, I kid you not, you didn't just hear the creaking. You heard this thunderous sound of timber snapping. Like entire thick pieces where it's like

And the worst part is we had to come back that way. And I'm like, Indiana Jones only went one way on these dumb bridges. I gotta double up on Indiana Jones Adventures. We saw we we we went into the middle we went into one village where where I got chased by two witch doctors

and real and they imagine the Scooby Doo version. That's what they look like with machetes. I'm here, so I prevailed. So it was okay. But also, every one of these villages, I had actually asked the chief, they all had a chief, if I could speak in their village.

And what's crazy is most of them said yes, some would ignore it, a lot of them started coming and listening, and I got to lead a couple of them to Jesus while I was there, which was pretty surreal and cool.

But I even went into one village that we drove so it was so in the middle of nowhere. We spent the night when I was it it there wasn't even a road to it. It was like it's like and we got all the way there. I get out of the truck first, and they mob me.

Like, they're all over there grabbing my face, looking at my touching my hair, grabbing my arms, just looking at me. And I'm like I looked at them like, hey, I get it. I'm a good looking man. I'm used to this happening in The United States,

but I didn't expect it here and I'm serving God. Can we just calm it down? I'll sign autographs later. No. That's not what happened. I actually it happened and I looked at my friend and he goes, what is going on? And he goes, you are the first white person they've ever seen,

Ever. And they've never seen blue eyes, and they're they're just mystified by it. That's some crazy stuff. But the part I can't explain, the craziest thing that happened, as far as to this day, I I don't understand, but I'm glad it happened. And that was we stopped at this little store

and came back out. And we're like, where's the keys? Where's the keys? I go, I found them. They go, where are they? They're inside the truck. We locked our keys in the truck. We're stuck. And we're trying to get into it. We're trying anything we can do. And then all these people started helping. They're helpful people.

And and matter of fact, I have a picture of that. I have a picture of the first group of guys that started to help. One guy's trying to get into the top of the door. One guy's looking at the actual lock and maybe the bottom. That guy's just like, why are you taking my picture?

But there was other guys on this, and we ended up with a mob there trying to help. They were trying every idea. Nothing was happening. I see this one guy. He's looking, and he just turns around and runs away. I'm like, that was weird. About five minutes later, he comes running back all sweaty.

Comes up to me, I got it. I got the answer. I could get you into your truck. And I'm like, what? What do you got? Goes, got a key. A key. Where did you get it? And he goes, here. And he holds up this key. It looked like it was found in an archaeological dig.

It was rusted out and missing parts of it. It looked like if you just hit it, it would break. And it was and it was from, like, a 1972 gremlin.

I mean, this was like an ancient key that looked just janky and terrible. I didn't even think you could. I thought it would break even trying to do anything with it. I go, nice try. I I I love the effort.

I love the effort you put in there, but there is no way that's gonna work. He goes, it's work. I go, no. It didn't work. And I go, no. It won't. And he and he goes, he stuck it in the door. And I'm like, you're gonna get embarrassed. And he goes, he turned it, and I go, see? Click. It opened the door. There's

no explanation for this. There is no mechanical reason. There there is nothing else. I just think maybe God was having pity on us getting stuck out there, and he's like, it's not your day to die yet, Bill. So it's like, I don't know.

I just can't believe that that shouldn't have worked. That key was terrible. It didn't look like it would do anything. It looked wimpy. It looked old. It looked it looked out of date. It didn't look like it would accomplish the purpose that it need to accomplish, but it opened the door.

That's Easter. That's Jesus. He's that key. He's the key that opened the door to life. And he didn't look like it to the people of his time because they had their idea of winning and they many missed it. He didn't because he didn't come and save their day. He didn't come and get rid of their government problem that they had.

He didn't come and solve all their individual struggles that day because he came for a bigger purpose. He came to save you. You. And to be able to have an internal relationship with him to find what real life is and for all of eternity. And if you're looking for the other win, you're gonna miss him.

Because, yeah, I get it. Based on everything we've seen in the world, Jesus doesn't seem like the model of this victory. But he's the only one that could open the door to that tomb.

He's the only one that could bring us life.

What are you chasing? Jesus won because we can't. And the only way we can have that win that Jesus said in that Corinthians passage, he did that for us because what you have to understand is this, the only way we can get that win is the same way Jesus won that confused everybody. He won by surrendering. He surrendered.

That's what confused the disciples. They had watched Jesus do powerful things. They even watched when he's in his own town. They were gonna throw him off a mountain once.

And they were gonna kill him. But Jesus said, not today. He says he just walked through the crowd, and then the people said, where'd Jesus go? It's like he did the great he did the first Jedi mind trick ever. I'm not the savior you're looking for. What happened? Where'd he go? Where'd who go? And they realized,

you can't kill Jesus if he doesn't wanna die. So when he let their enemy, the Romans, kill him on a cross. And you notice it says he gave up his spirit. It's almost like it's time to die. They were confused.

But he won through sacrifice and surrender. And that's how we get his win, is quit chasing it. Surrender to him. We have to surrender to his love. That is how you win.

It's not coming to church. It's not like, alright, this Easter, I'm gonna start coming all the time. It'd be a good thing if you kept coming, but it's not the coming that's gonna save you.

If you keep coming to church, you keep coming and just pouring that relationship with Jesus because you already know his love and you wanna live from it. It's not live for it. That's you trying to get the win. And that's why you get discouraged, you get you get you become Peter in that moment.

But what if you just surrendered?

And how do you do that? The Bible says if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord, you will be saved. In other words, we need to confess and profess. How you surrender is you have to confess that you can't win. You say, I am a sinner.

You can't justify. You can't say, well, I'm better than them. It doesn't matter. It's what sin is. It doesn't matter how far you miss the bullseye. Every single one of us has missed the bullseye. And we need to confess that. And then turn and profess that, but because Jesus,

I put my faith and my trust in what he did for me. That's how you get eternal life. That's how you begin a relationship with Jesus. That's how you become a Christian.

Because get this, Jesus loves you and me more than we can even love ourselves. That's the truth. Some of us confidence, like, I don't trust. Where was he when this was like, you didn't know. The truth is what he did for us, he understands what we really need more than we understand what we need. And he loves you.

He's not mad at you. He's not trying to get he's not trying to get you. He's trying to get you. Get it? He loves you that much. Let him surrender.

So that's what I wanna do. Wanna give some of you a chance to join the hundreds and hundreds of people that have already done that this weekend. If you'd close your eyes, bow your heads. I'm gonna pray with you.

And if you've never done this and you'd like to to surrender to that, I'll say a prayer with you. And but if you when you pray with me, make it your own words by just putting your faith in Jesus.

But I'm gonna ask you as we pray just to do one thing in in an act of faith for yourself too, to make it real and feel real, to have that visual for you, is before we pray, if you wanna pray with me, just raise your hand. I want you to hold it up in the air and imagine you're handing him your sin

and he's taking your hand for life. I see those hands going up. Go ahead, hold them up if you wanna pray with me. I see him. I see you go right over there. See him all over the room.

And just pray something like this, Jesus, thank you that you won because I realize I can't and I never could. I've sinned, I've missed the mark. But right now, in the best way I know how, I turn to you. And I thank you for taking my sin,

and I put my trust that you came, you lived a life I couldn't live, died a death I could never come back from. You resurrected, and you beat death for me. And I put my faith in that. Thank you for taking my hand. Help me to walk out of here and walk with you all through this life and all through eternity.

And understand more and more each day, not to try to win, to try to live for your love, but just understand what it means to live from that love. Thank you. And God, I thank you for all these hands.

I thank you for these people here. I thank you, and I pray for any Peters in this room that maybe they already know you. They don't need to lift their hand to meet you. They already know you, but they felt far away, and now they're sitting here. Lord, may you speak to their hearts that you want to meet them again. You're not rejecting them.

You want them to take your hand again and walk through life. Give them the courage to do that. And, Lord, we just celebrate this moment. I thank you that you came and you were the key that nobody thought was gonna do anything good,

but you did what had to be done because you love us more than we love ourselves. I thank you that you were the victor, that death does not have its sting. Victory did not win. Death did not have a victory. You had the victory. You defeated death. I thank you, Lord, that you won because I can't. And

I give you all the glory and all the praise, and I pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.

God is so kind, so rich in love,

you. Decision in this room. I believe you've just made one of the greatest decisions of your life. Don't let the day end without telling somebody because our faith isn't the same when we do it alone. You can let us know online at rockpoint.io

or you can head to the prayer room. We've got a team who'd love to pray with you or you can let us know at new here start here. As you can see, I've lost my cohost.

That's because he's outside. We have an amazing family experience. We've got a hay maze, a petting zoo with baby chicks, baby ducks if you're into that kind of thing. So hang out, grab a coffee, and we'll see you back here next weekend.