New Life Group Study - Part 3 - Rock Point Church · Rewind

New Life Group Study - Part 3 - Rock Point Church · Rewind

Pastor Mark Collins · May 1, 2019

Big Idea

Jesus' resurrection turned sorrow into a new creation story, and He still calls people who have doubts and fears into the mission of announcing that good news to the world.

The resurrection of Jesus turned the disciples' grief into hope and launched a brand new creation. Jesus met frightened, doubting, grieving people right where they were, gave them His peace and His Spirit, and sent them out to carry His forgiveness and good news to the whole world.

Key points

1
1The women and disciples came to the tomb in grief, not expecting resurrection
Pastor Mark describes the women arriving before dawn with spices, exhausted and heartbroken, simply to mourn and finish burial customs. Mary Magdalene finds the tomb empty and assumes the worst, that someone has cruelly taken the body away.
2
2Peter and John discover the empty tomb and grave clothes, and belief dawns
John outruns Peter but hesitates at the entrance, while Peter barges in to find the linen wrappings lying intact and the head cloth separated, as if the body had simply passed through them. Pastor Mark says this convinces them it wasn't theft but resurrection, a new creation beyond even Lazarus' return to ordinary life and death.
3
3Jesus meets Mary in her tears and gives her a mission
Mary mistakes the risen Jesus for the gardener, which Pastor Mark says was truer than she knew since Jesus is the new gardener undoing the chaos of Eden. Jesus tells her not to cling to Him because their relationship is changing, then sends her as the first witness, an apostle to the apostles, to tell the brothers He is alive.
4
4Jesus commissions frightened disciples with peace, the Spirit, and a hard responsibility
Jesus appears behind locked doors and speaks shalom into a room that had none, then gives the disciples a job they never asked for and felt unqualified for: announcing forgiveness of sins. Pastor Mark stresses this isn't the power to forgive sins, which belongs to God alone, but the charge to proclaim forgiveness through Christ, made possible only by the Holy Spirit.
5
5Jesus meets Thomas' doubt without scolding him
Thomas misses the first meeting and refuses to believe without seeing, so a week later Jesus appears again and offers him the very evidence he needed. Pastor Mark notes Jesus doesn't harden toward Thomas but meets him where he is, and Thomas responds, My Lord and my God.

Application

Pastor Mark's closing charge is to go into all the world and preach the gospel, using words if you have to but living it out first.

Seek the Lord while He may be found
Since Jesus no longer appears face to face the way He did to the disciples, Pastor Mark urges taking every opportunity now to seek Him, especially through His word.
Let your Bible get worn, not dusty
In his prayer, Pastor Mark asks that Rock Point's Bibles be read until the pages are torn and tear-stained rather than left gathering dust on a shelf.
Respond to Jesus even with doubts
Following Thomas' example, bring your questions and doubts honestly to Jesus rather than staying away or hardening your heart.
Go into all the world and preach the gospel
Pick up the mission the disciples were just catching on to: do good deeds, be kind, and also tell people about the source of your joy so it changes the trajectory of the world.

Take it into your week

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7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

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Day 1

There is something quietly stunning about the detail John gives us in the tomb that first Easter morning. The grave clothes were not scattered or torn — they were lying there, undisturbed, as if a body had simply passed through them. Peter and John saw the same linen wrappings, but John saw them and believed. The sermon points out that this was not the scene of a theft. Thieves don't fold napkins or leave fabric arranged in peace. What happened here was something altogether different — something the world had never seen before. Jesus had not simply come back to the life He had before. He had passed through death into an entirely new kind of existence, a new creation breaking open from the inside out. That detail matters because it means the resurrection is not a patch on the old order. It is the beginning of something genuinely new. The same Jesus who lay in that tomb is alive — not as a resuscitated corpse counting down to a second death, but as the firstborn of a whole new creation. And because He is, everything that seemed final — grief, failure, death itself — is now open to question. The empty tomb does not just tell us Jesus is gone. It tells us something new has begun, and we are invited into it.

For reflection

What in your life have you quietly assumed is permanent or beyond hope? How does the reality of a genuinely new creation — not just a reset — change how you see that thing today?

Pray

Pray for open eyes to see the resurrection not as a past event but as a present reality that reaches into the parts of your life that feel most stuck or finished.

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

This message traces one extraordinary day in John 20 — from an empty tomb at dawn to a locked room that evening — and asks what it means that the resurrection isn't just history but the opening chapter of a whole new creation we're invited to live inside of right now.

Discussion questions

1
In John 20:6-8, Peter and John find the grave clothes lying undisturbed — not scattered, but neatly in place — while Jesus is gone. What do you think that detail was meant to signal to the first people who saw it?
2
Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener, and the message pointed out she was both wrong and right — that Jesus is the new Gardener restoring what was lost when Adam was expelled from Eden. What does that image of Jesus as a new Gardener add to how we understand what the resurrection actually accomplished?
3
In John 20:17-18, Jesus chose Mary Magdalene as the first person He sent to proclaim the resurrection — even though her culture dismissed women as unreliable witnesses. What does that choice say about the kind of people Jesus sends, and about what His mission looks like?
4
In John 20:21-23, Jesus breathes on the disciples and says, 'As the Father has sent Me, so I am sending you,' then gives them the Holy Spirit and ties that gift to the announcement of forgiveness. What do you think it means for ordinary people to carry that kind of authority into the world?
5
Thomas wasn't in the room the first time Jesus appeared, and when the others told him, he said he needed to see for himself. When Jesus came back and met Thomas face to face, He didn't scold him — He showed up with evidence. What does that response tell us about how Jesus handles honest doubt or hard questions?
6
In John 20:29, Jesus calls those who believe without seeing 'truly blessed,' and the message connected that directly to seeking Jesus through His Word. How might a community like ours actually live that out together — not just as individuals, but as a group?

Pray together

Ask God to meet us where we actually are — in grief, in fear, or in honest doubt — and to send us forward as people carrying the good news of forgiveness into the world around us.

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Topics

Doubt and Faith Encountering the Risen Jesus New Creation The Great Commission The Resurrection

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