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You. Your love. Lord, your word says that you are the same yesterday, today, and forever. Father, we hope in that this morning. Lord, we know that you are good. We trust in who you are. We rest in your faithfulness and your goodness toward us. Father, we thank you. We love you. May you be glorified
and magnified above every other name we pray. Amen. You guys can take your seats.
Well, good morning, Rock Point. How are guys doing today? It's great to see you. Can we take a moment and just celebrate all that God is doing through our missions ministry here? Yeah.
And honestly, I just wanna say thank you because you guys are such a generous church. Like, seriously, you guys are the most generous people that I know. That is what I love about our church is we don't just say
that we love our community, we actually show it. So thank you. We strive to be a church that if we ever closed our doors, the community would actually miss us. So again, thank you for allowing us to be that kind of church. And with that said, I wanna let you know about our mission boxes. So every year around Christmas time, this is something that we talk about and we ask every family here at Rock Point to consider giving a financial gift so that we can continue
to just practically practically and tangibly show love and support to our community, our neighbors, and our ministry partners around the world. So today when you leave, you're gonna get a box that looks like this. It's actually gonna be flat, so you gotta assemble it, but it'll look like this.
And here's what we're gonna ask. I just wanna encourage you as a first step, take this box home as as a family, pray about what God might have you give so that, again, that we can continue to just love our community.
And then as early as next week, we're gonna be collecting these boxes. We're gonna have some Christmas trees in front of the stage on both sides. You can actually bring this offering
box, this mission box back with your offering inside and place it underneath the Christmas trees. So thank you again for your generosity, and would you guys take a moment to pray with me?
Lord, just thank you for today, God, that we can gather in your name. I thank you for this generous church, Lord, these these generous individuals, Lord, who get what it means to be your hands and your feet to our community, to tangibly love our neighbors. God, I pray that you would inspire us, that you would you would motivate us today, God, to be your church and to represent you well. And God, I pray that the offering that we receive this Christmas,
that it truly would be used to impact lives and to change destinies and to build your kingdom. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you. You can check out this video.
Hey, everyone. My name is Regan, and welcome to Rock Point. If this is your first time here with us, we'd love to know. Stop by the new here, start your table in the courtyard to say hi and learn more about how you can get connected.
While you're here with us today, we encourage you to take out your smartphone and type in Rock Point. Here, you can follow along with the sermon, take notes, keep track of upcoming events, join a group, or a serving team.
On December 8 at 11AM, we will be breaking ground for our new building. We want to invite you to be a part of this special moment in Rock Point history. We'll be collecting dirt from the land, so we're asking that you bring a small garden shovel or anything you can scoop up dirt with. Check out rockpoints at io and click on the what's happening tab to find out more.
December twelve through twenty first, Rock Point Church will be hosting a Christmas light show. Bring your families and invite your friends for an evening of holiday fun. This is a great way to grow in community and reach those around you who don't know Jesus. For something warm, come enjoy the show and sip some hot chocolate. Head over to rockpointe.io
and click on the what's happening tab for more information. Our mission here at Rock Point is to point people to Jesus by loving them like Jesus.
Thank you for being a part of this by living intentionally and through the faithful giving of your tithes and offering. While we don't collect the offering and service, we do have boxes near all the exits both in the worship center and in the lobby. You can also give online at rockpoint.io.
Let us know if we can help you in any way while you're here with us today, and be sure to connect with us on rockpoint.io and on social media to stay up to date with everything here at Rock Point.
All right. Good morning Rock Point. How are you guys doing? Good to see you. My name is Scott Rogers and I've been here before. I'll get to that in just a moment. But you know the word about you. I talk about like, what's the personality of this service, with five different services, and everybody,
without any exception, has said, this service is the rowdy group. They are into it. Are you gonna live up to that billing or what? What's gonna, right? Okay, all right, good. And this is your first time here at Rock Point, it's
not a library, it's a church, we love Jesus. And my name is Scott Rogers, so thankful to be here, a friend of pastor Bill, excited and that he invited me out this weekend. It's been about a year, maybe a little more since I've been here at Rock Point,
and it's just awesome to be back. So for those of you who maybe I haven't had a chance to meet you yet, let me just give you the little bio here. My wife and I, Shelly, we've been married for a long time and we live in a little bedroom community outside of Sacramento called Folsom, California.
And it's someplace some of you Intel folks might know that because we have an Intel location right down the street from our house. And we have three kids, two of them are awesome, and our oldest is I'm trying, I'm working.
Our oldest is Ashley, is actually a senior out here at GCU and she's gonna be graduating in the spring. And Morgan, our middle aged child, is now a junior in college in South Florida, and her son Dylan's a senior in high school,
just decided about a week to two weeks ago that he's going to go to GCU as well. So you're welcome. I'm helping to build all those buildings on that side of town, and it's going to be really, really super fun. If you have a Bible with you, go to Matthew chapter 14.
Anybody here a paper bible person like you got the, you know, the real paper stuff? Okay. Cool. How many of bible app? Bible app. Okay. You're outnumbering the paper bible people now. This is cool.
If you're not carrying a bible in any form, and maybe you're not even familiar with scripture, you're just here because someone bribed you and promised you lunch if you came to church with them, don't worry, you're gonna get lunch. Is that what happened to you guys?
So you're gonna get lunch, and we'll have the scriptures for you on the screens as well, so you can follow along with us. So before we even get into Matthew 14, my son Dylan, as I mentioned, he's a senior in high school. When I was a senior in high school, I remember this pretty clear.
One thing was that I wasn't a very good student in high school. Actually, I wasn't even close to being a good student in high school. But, I looked really cool. In fact, here's what I look like right up here. You're welcome. It's my senior picture.
Some of you guys, you wanna wear that sweater, don't you? You're like, give me that sweater. That is so awesome. That worked great today. Some of the guys were like, man, wish I had hair like that because it's all gone away, right? That's my senior picture in front of the super cool
uplighting on the window blinds or whatever the photographer was using there. That's my senior photo, and in my senior year, I remember I was in sociology class, and my teacher's name was Mr. Perry. And what was funny about it, know, Mr. Perry, well meaning teacher,
just you know he's the kind of guy who he would get riled easily,
and he had like his glasses were like super big, and they were like four or five years out of prescription, you could just kind of tell, and in that class, I sat in the very back, like literally if he's standing here, I'm in the way back, you guys back there, wave at me if you're in the back corner back there. Yeah, that's me.
All of the back row people, like you tenants sit in the back row wherever you go, just raise your hand, I want to see who you are. Sir, you missed it, you're in the middle, what are you going to do about this?
He says, you call me out anymore, I'm going go to the back row, I don't like that stuff. So I'm in the back row, and I can't remember what provoked the incident, but Mr. Perry lost his cool, and he got really mad at me, and all I can remember of that moment was, he points back to me in the corner of the room,
and he gets all red, and the veins start bulging in his neck, and he yells, and he says, Miss, my last name's Rogers, if I didn't say it, he says, Mr. Rogers! And he's just yelling, And he says, do you realize you're the only senior in this whole class? And he was right. Everyone else was a freshman and a sophomore.
I don't even remember why that was, how that happened. Happened. Maybe I was behind, I don't know, but I was the only senior in the whole class. He says, you're the only senior in my class, and you're the only one in my class flunking with an f. And he just shouts it out, full of anger, and I'm just like, oh gosh,
you could have kept that between us, like that would have helped. But again, he was telling the truth. Totally flunking that class, failing miserably. Anyone here ever fail like me at anything? Like raise your hand if the rest of you are failing at telling the truth, like come on, right?
I mean you know you failed the test, maybe you failed the semester, maybe you failed the project at work and it didn't go as planned, or let me make it a little easier for us. You ever feel like a failure, anyone? Like really, I'll make it even easier. Any parents in the room?
Right, so you get it. I mean, how many times I think, oh God, save my children from me because I'm breaking them, I think. Or maybe if you're married, you ever have a moment in your marriage where you're like, this is a marriage fail moment right now, I don't know how we're gonna recover. Mean, you know, it's like, I'm like, all of those.
Here's the thing that every one of us knows. Like, Christian, non Christian, religious, irreligious, all that aside, every single one of us as human beings, as we know, failure is a part of life, right? What I wanna do in this short conversation, is I wanna reframe failure for all of us.
And I have actually applied this to my life a number of times, and I can say with all integrity, it's made a difference in my life, and I think that if you will apply what we're going to talk about, it will save every single one of us from a lot of disappointment, a lot of frustration, even a lot of heartache. Especially
if you're on the younger end of the spectrum, maybe like 25 and under. I just pray that you grab a hold of this because it will really help you as you go through life, because failure is a part of life. And here's the big idea that I want to wrap our minds and hearts around and unpack it in scripture,
is that failure is an event not a person. Now just let that hit you for a moment. Failure is an event, it's not a person. When God made you, he didn't make a mistake and he fully intends to fulfill his purposes for your life and my life as we submit to him. Failure is not part of the plan, yet we all fail. What do we do with this?
What's interesting about this whole conversation is if you go to the Bible and you read all through scripture you see a number of people whom God used to do incredible things, yet they had a number of failing moments and some of them failed miserably.
And in Matthew 14, we're gonna look at one of those folks in the New Testament,
the guy's name is Peter, Peter the Apostle. Anyone ever heard of the Apostle Peter? Let me give you a little context here and we're gonna read some stuff. So Matthew 14, well before that let me just tell you his resume. I mean think of the guy, if you're familiar with the Bible,
it's pretty impressive. He was one of the 12 Apostles. He's the guy whom Jesus said, upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell won't prevail against it. God used Peter to write two books of the New Testament, first and second Peter.
And most scholars will tell us that the book of Mark was actually Mark writing down what Peter told him to write down. Yet he failed miserably a number of times. How does, how could that be where someone, one of the 12 apostles, used to pen holy scripture
and change the world, yet failed so many times, how is that? I think the answer is actually quite easy, Cause He's a lot like you and me, He's a human being. And it's just the way life goes. So in Matthew chapter 14, here's what's going on. Is Jesus is wanting to get some time aside to pray,
but people are following Him like crazy, like huge crowds keep coming around him because he's doing his stuff now. He's doing the miracles, he's healing people,
he's turning water into wine, all this kind of stuff, and so whenever he tries to get away, everybody just follows him. And that's the situation in Matthew 14. And the disciples, this small group of guys that are with him,
they say to Jesus, they say, hey, better send everybody home, it's getting late, because if we don't send them home now, it's gonna be too late, they need to get something to eat. And then Jesus says, well, why don't you just feed them? He flips it on them, as He usually does, and they say, well, what are we, how are we gonna feed these thousands of people? All we have are five loaves of bread and two fish.
You've heard the song, right? The Sunday school song, five loaves, two fish, Jesus made a miracle dish. That's why not on the worship team, that's just not my gift. But he's got five loaves, two fish, they're like, what do we do? So Jesus gives thanks, and a miracle happens, it multiplies, and they feed over 5,000 people.
Once they're fed, Jesus tells his disciples to get into a boat, go across the lake, it's the Sea Of Galilee, it's a pretty sizable lake, and then he tells everyone else it's time to leave and then he spends time in prayer. The middle of the night,
something happens and that's where we're gonna pick this up. So go to chapter 14 and we're gonna start down in verse, let's see here, 25.
It says this, about 03:00 in the morning Jesus came toward them walking on the water. Now, we're gonna pause a few times through this. Just think about this. If you are familiar with the Bible,
it's so easy to read something like this and go, yeah, been there, read this before. Yep, he walked on water. Just think about this. He suspends the laws of physics. He's walking on water. If this really happened, like, is there any miracle that's ever happened like this?
I believe it happened because I believe the Bible's true.
Bill told me a prerequisite for teaching at Rock Point was that I had to believe the Bible was true, so I passed that test. If this is true, I believe He walked on water. Next verse says that when the disciples saw Him walking on the water, they were terrified. Try
to put yourself in their shoes for just a moment. They're in the middle of the lake, it's dark, we'll see that it's
windy and wavy, so if the clouds aren't blocking the moon, maybe there's a little bit of moonlight, but you're in the middle of the lake, 03:00 in the morning, you see the silhouette of someone walking towards you on the water, what would your response be? I know for mine it would be, I wish I wore diapers on this trip, because this is scaring everything right out of me, right? And then it says, in their fear they cried out, it's a ghost!'
But Jesus spoke to them at once, don't be afraid, he said, take courage, I'm here. Then Peter, everybody say Peter. Peter. Here we go with this guy. It says, and Peter called to him, Lord, if it's really you, who's it gonna be? Like who else is it gonna be? It's his voice,
it's probably the shape of what they're used to, you know, and seeing the silhouette of his image. Who else is gonna be walking on water? He says, Lord, if it's really you, tell me to come to you walking on the water. He's basically doing this. He's going, Hey, Jesus, okay, if that's really you, can I do this too?
Can I try? And what's the response? It says, Jesus says, Yes, come. So Peter went over the side of the boat, and he walked in the water toward Jesus. Again, supernatural miracle Peter, every bit like you and me, the guy's walking on the water.
But, in verse 30, everybody say, but. But when he saw the strong wind and the waves, he was terrified and began to sink. Save me, Lord, he shouted.
How many of you guys have heard this before? This whole walking to Jesus and Peter in the boat and the water? Yeah. Because if you've been to church maybe more than a year or two, you've probably heard this a couple times.
And I remember in the circles where I first came to faith, I would hear this taught quite frequently over a number of years, and almost always, it was kind of taught with this kind of approach. I'm gonna try to mimic it, if I fail miserably, just give me some Rock Point Grace, okay? Are you ready? Okay. When the Lord God
gets your attention, and he calls you to step out of the boat in faith, and you do what the Lord tells you to do, and all the trials, and the winds, and the waves, and the resistance, and everything comes pushing against you in your life, what do you do when you start to sink? You reach out your hand. Save me, Jesus.
Save me. That's all I got. That's all I got. That's Rock Point Grace right there. So,
do I say about that? I just say, amen to that, man. So be it, all day long. When I'm in a situation in life and I don't know what to do, and it seems like I'm sinking, I'm reaching out for Jesus, that's my first response right there. Jesus, help me, save me from this. Amen to that. But here's where my mind goes
when I read that, is when you're the only one stepping out of the boat, everyone sees when you start to sink. But you know what I want to say to that? So what? Don't let the fear of what others might think or say keep you from trying something new or doing something great for the glory of God.
If you're ever tempted to feel embarrassed because you took a step of faith and the results look like it's failed, wear it like a badge of honor. At least you stepped out of the boat and you went for it. Let's get back to this in verse 31. It says, Jesus immediately reached out and grabbed him
and he says this, you have so little faith, why did you doubt me? When they climbed back into the boat, the wind stopped. Then the disciples, what did the disciples do? Pat him on the back, shake his hand, hey, high five fist bump. No, because at that point you're probably pretty convinced this is the son of God
and the reasonable response, they worshipped him. And then the last verse it says,
the disciples worshipped him and they said you really are the son of God, they exclaimed. When I used to read this, not only do I picture the image of the kind of where I come from and the way it was taught, I would read this
in a tone. Like you know when you read something and on the inside your inside voice has a tone to what's being said, how they're saying it. Is it happy? Is it angry? Is it sad? All that kind of stuff. And I would read this when Jesus
said, You have so little faith, why did you doubt me? For so long, up until just a couple years ago, I would think that He was rebuking Peter.
Peter, you have so little faith. Why did you doubt me? That's the tone in which I was hearing it in my head. I'm speculating here, but I don't think Jesus is rebuking Peter. I think he's celebrating Peter. Let me try to explain why. Maybe make a case for this speculation. Our son Dylan, when
he's riding on training wheels, and it's the day for no more training wheels. You ever done that? You take the training wheels off, and it's your child, or someone's child, or maybe you can even think when it was you, and you're there, and you're like, alright, we're gonna do this, no training wheels. Like when I was a kid, what I had on was shorts and a t shirt and maybe some flip flops,
and that was it. Nowadays, it's like put them in the hockey gear,
get them all padded up. It's good. It's alright, man. And so, people are like, alright, Dylan, here's what we're gonna do. Training was rough, this is the day. Keep in mind Dylan, it's all about the core. We've been doing crunches and sit ups. You're good four year old, you've got this thing. Here we go, I'm gonna push you, and then you're gonna start pedaling, and then I'm gonna let go, and you're just gonna ride off into glory. It's gonna be awesome. Alright. Here we go. Ready, Dylan? Alright. Pushing. We're going. Okay. Start pedaling. Start pedaling. Start pedaling. There you go. Keep pedaling. Balance. There you go. There you go. Yeah. You're doing it. Wait. Yes. That's oh.
Geez. You're such a loser, man. I can't believe you did that. Crashing in a gosh. Get over here. That'd be like call CPS. Right? I mean, like, traumatize the child. We would never do that, would we? What would we do? We wouldn't rebuke him for crashing,
we would celebrate the short distance study, wouldn't we? Like, Dylan, that was awesome. Come here. Give me a big old hug, a high five. Man, we're gonna go out for ice cream. We're gonna celebrate. You did it. Your first time ever riding without training wheels. So cool. Why, if you and I as imperfect, broken,
fallible human beings, if we would celebrate such a small accomplishment, how in the world would Jesus not celebrate when someone by faith walks on water? I'm just speculating. So instead of saying, you have little faith, why didn't you, why did you doubt me Peter? I'm thinking maybe he said, Peter, you have so little faith.
Look what it got you. Why did you doubt me? You could have been the first human aside from the son of God in the history of the world, and maybe the only one until God comes back to actually breakdance on the surface of the Sea Of Galilee, and let it go, like can't touch this plane all day long. This is awesome.
I think he's celebrating them. As long as we're speculating, I wonder if he maybe turned to the guys after he pulls Peter in, turns to the rest of them and says, where's your faith? Man, you had your chance. What are you doing? You see,
stepping onto the water, I'm speaking metaphorically now but we can all like attach that to something in our life. Stepping onto the water can be scary,
but I want to suggest that staying in the boat is the most dangerous place to be. Going all in with God, that can be frightening at times. Anybody ever tried it? Okay, Bill, you gotta step it up here. Four people have tried to go all in with God at your church. I mean, it can be scary going, okay, I'm gonna read
the holy Bible and do what it says. That can be scary at times. It can be intimidating going, okay, I'm gonna share my story with someone else. I'm gonna share my faith and how God has impacted my life with my co worker, my neighbor, or my friend, or my family. That can be pretty scary at times.
It can be pretty scary when we say, Okay God, everything I have is yours and I'm just a steward of it. What do you want me to let go of so that I can resource the work of the local church in the community? And that's a scary thing when you first start doing that kind of stuff. However, I would suggest
that living a risk averse life, unwilling to do anything that ever requires God to come through for us, that's the dangerous place to be. Because we know a failure is an event, not a person. Here's something else about failure, it's not final. It's just not final.
So what do you and I do when we fail? Because we all admit we have and we will. What do we do when this event happens? Well here's something that I want to suggest that we do. One is that we don't waste a failure, we learn from it.
Don't waste it, why waste it? Failure is the feed to a great education. It really is. The next time you fail and then I fail, we just say, God, what didn't I see here? God, show me. Give me some wisdom that I evidently I don't have. God, help me to not repeat this same thing again. Show me God. Ask your close friends like,
help me here, what did I miss, what can I do different next time? Just learn from the failure. It's a great education. Failure is often painful, right? So why waste it? Learn from it, grow from it, and try to do it a little different the next time around. Don't waste it,
let's learn from it. So let's get back and we're gonna see how this plays out in Peter's life too. So if you have your Bible, to Matthew 26.
Just turn to your right or scroll down. And what's going on in Matthew 26 is, it's important I set this up for you, Jesus is hanging with his disciples, as they often are, and they do the last supper and all that kind of stuff. They then go together towards the Mount Of Olives and Jesus begins to tell them the time has come,
I'm going to be you know, betrayed into the hands of people, put on trial, all this kind of stuff, this bad stuff is going to happen. And He literally says to all of His disciples, He says, every one of you are going to deny me before the night is through. And Peter
speaks up and he's like, Lord, even if everyone else denies you, I mean imagine that like all of his brothers, right? Like how they feel about that, but he's like, even if everyone else denies you, I never will. Jesus responds and says, Peter, before the rooster crows, how many times? Three times,
you're gonna deny me. And then Peter says, Lord, even if I have to die for you, I will never deny you. So a little bit later Jesus is arrested by these religious leaders after being, after Jesus Iscariot kind of turns him in, tells them where he is.
And they take him and put him on this little trial, ask him a bunch of questions, and his response gets them all riled up, and you know, like Mr. Perry times 10, and they start spitting in the face of Jesus. They start punching him, pulverizing, beating the snot out of him.
And the Bible shows us that Peter, whole time, was kind of hanging back in the shadows, following them as they went to this little trial, and as they're beating the living daylights out of Jesus, he's kind of hiding back, watching the whole thing unfold. And here's what happens. Go way down to verse 69. Matthew 20
nine says, meanwhile Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. A servant girl came over to him and said, you were one of those with Jesus the Galilean. But Peter denied it in front of everyone. I don't know what you're talking about, he said.
Everybody say, number one. Number one. There it is. Next verse, later, out by the gate, another servant girl noticed him and said to those standing around, this man was with Jesus of Nazareth, verse 72. Again, Peter denied it, this time with an oath. I don't even know the man. Everybody say, number two. Number two.
A little later, some of the other bystanders came over to Peter and said, You must be one of them. We can tell by your Galilean accent. Peter swore, A curse on me if I'm lying. I don't know the man. I
think that's how they sound. Number three. And then it says, suddenly Jesus's words flashed through Peter's mind before the rooster crows, you will deny three times that you even know me. What's it say then? And he went away weeping bitterly.
I don't think we could truly empathize with Peter in this moment, but let's just give it a shot. Think about this. Peter's been with Jesus for a few years. He's sitting under this profound, revelatory teaching. I mean, after all, he's the son of God. He's firsthand
observing and a witness to these miracles that's going on. He's seeing water turn to wine, and he saw Jesus walk on water. He saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead, he saw Jesus heal people, and all these signs and miracles are happening, and not only that, but Jesus has invested in Peter as a man.
Into his life, into his soul, into his future. And here Jesus is in what's probably physically the most painful moment of his life on this earth. And Peter, like passionately denies him. It's not like you know, if you're like me maybe when we're at Cain's chicken,
Like you know you want to pray and give God thanks because it tastes like it come from heaven.
And it's like the angelic dipping sauce and all that kind of stuff with the whole deal. And you're like, okay God I'm gonna thank you for this. This is awesome. Deep fried cholesterol goodness, it's so great, and you go to praying, you're like is anyone watching?
Like am I gonna be looked at as one of those people? Like you know, the religious praying person? It's not that little thing, it's Peter told Jesus to his face, I will die for you. I will never deny you. And there he goes.
You ever maybe failed someone you love? Do ever like feel like you failed someone you love? Like how about this, have you ever felt like you failed yourself? Let yourself down? You ever feel like you failed God? I mean think about it, like if you go to Rock Point Church, do you know what the scriptures say?
That God's grace is so immense, it's crazy. Yet if we, you know, we do stuff and we mess up and we're all jacked up and we keep stretching God's grace and if it was a rubber band, I'm like, God, I think I've stretched it and it snaps. God, I'm too far gone.
I'm a horrible mess. God, I failed you. I failed myself. I failed maybe those I love. Think about Peter. He's gotta be experiencing all of that in that moment. In his mind, failing the one he loves, Jesus. Failing himself because he vowed that he would never do this. And in a way, failing God
because he's just like denying it all. You know, said failure isn't final. I think that there's an exception to this. Because Peter is in that moment having a decision to make. Is he going to live the rest of his life from that place? Just living haunted with regret. I coulda, I shoulda, I didn't,
I coulda, I shoulda, I didn't, and just haunted by that regret. Because the problem with failure is this, though it's not final, it is if it becomes our identity. See, we all admit we've failed And we could all say, I will fail down the road.
But when it becomes we believe that it's who we are. I can say, I have failed, but when I begin to say and believe I am a failure, then we're in a tough spot. Because when you and I believe that that's who we are, we begin to behave in that way. We sabotage even some of the blessings of God in our life.
Things in our life too that bring success and maybe promotion or maybe a healthy relationship. Sometimes what happens is when good things happen, and yet deep down we believe that we're a failure, so this is what we deserve, or we're getting what we don't deserve, so we start to think I'm an impostor
and I'm gonna be found out pretty soon. I'm truly a failure, this isn't supposed to be my story. Being blessed by God or success in life, and so we begin to behave in little things that sabotage the good stuff.
We start to take a healthy relationship and mess it up because we just don't believe it could ever supposed to be that way for us. We take a job promotion and we're excited about it, but yet we're like, oh, I can't do this. This is not how I'm supposed to be. I've always failed. This isn't me. So we start to behave in that way. See when failure becomes our identity,
that's a tough spot. And Peter, just like you and me, in that moment we have a decision to make. Am I gonna choose to believe that failure is an event and not a person? Sure, I'm gonna learn from this failure. I'm not gonna waste it, but I'm not going to allow it to become my identity because every human being fails at times.
And here's the awesome thing about this, is that God loves to redeem our failure. He loves to redeem your failure and my failure. Let me prove it. Take your Bible, open it up to the book of Acts chapter two, ACTS. It's not the body spray, it's a book in the Bible.
A couple of you laughed, no one's laughed at that at all up to this point. That's why I love this service. So here's what's going on in Acts chapter two, is Jesus has been crucified, he's risen from the dead, and he says to his disciples, many of you are familiar with it like in Matthew 28,
go tell everybody that I've risen from the dead. Share this good news. Tell it all around the world who I am, the savior, the Messiah, the Lord of all, the risen Christ. And then he says to them, but I want you to wait until
the spirit of God is poured out on the earth, because that's what's going to empower you to fulfill this great commission. You're not gonna be able to do it on your own, you're not gonna be eloquent public speakers, you're not going to be convincing
one on one, it's gonna be the spirit of God doing the work in the hearts of people as you share this story. So they go away and they kind of sequester themselves in this place called the Upper Room, many of you have heard of it, and God pours out the Holy Spirit. They just begin to pray and worship like crazy,
so much so that people outside of this place hear what they think is a commotion and they start gathering around. It'd kind of be like take this service right here and take us all with the band and Bill Bush and everybody and do church in one of the little storefronts in the Santana Mall. And it's
loud and it's crazy and people walking, what is going on in there? That's kind of what's happening. And so people, by the thousands we'll see in a moment, are gathered around wondering what's happening. Peter gets really bold in this moment. The spirit of God is moving upon him, and within him.
And so if you look at chapter two verse 36, we're gonna read a few verses. And really, verse 36, it's basically Peter's declaring the message like, know, God has sent Jesus the Messiah whom you crucified
to be Lord, and all that kind of stuff. Right? So he's basically giving the first gospel message, maybe some of us relate to it in that way. Maybe the first sermon after Jesus has risen from the dead. And then here's what it says in verse 37. It says, Peter's words pierced their hearts. Now what's that mean?
Pierced their hearts. What it means is that they were deeply convicted. Have you ever felt that way? Like maybe you're in church or you're just praying or you're reading your Bible or someone's talking to you and you're just piercing your heart, you're convicted. That's the spirit of God at work. And it says,
Jesus' words pierced their hearts and they said to him and the other apostles, brothers, what should we do? Which is usually the first noticeable response when God's really working on our hearts. We're like convicted
and encouraged and going, okay, now I gotta do something with this, what do I do? So verse 38, Peter replies, each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God. Which by the way, is always in style. Never goes out of fashion. Having a relationship with God requires repenting of our sin. And then he says this, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.
Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Go down to verse 41. Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day, how many? About 3,000 in all. 3,000. That's roughly the same number of people who will be here at Rock Point Church on a given weekend. At all five services.
That's a lot of people. Think about this moment though. It's the first ever, you know, God loves you, He forgives you, Jesus is the son of God, He's been risen from the dead. It's the first gospel message, maybe called the first sermon since Jesus had been crucified, right?
And God has poured out His spirit like never before. He's convicting people in their hearts to get right with him. And thousands of people are listening to this. And 3,000 people take the step of faith and receive Christ into their life.
Now, as we read the rest of the Bible, we realize that in that moment there's a spiritual transaction. Someone far from God, out of relationship with Him, comes into relationship with God. Scripture says that we're literally transferred from darkness into the kingdom of the son of God.
Their eternal destination has just changed. They've done a they've done an eternal pivot right there in that moment. 3,000 people. It's the birth of the New Testament church, and it's the catalyst to why you and I are sitting here today. That's where it all began. Who did God use in that moment? He used the man
who vehemently denied him about three weeks previous to that. Tell me God doesn't love to retain our failure. You've messed up. I've messed up. We've we all have our own story, but I don't think we've quite done that. And yet God chooses to use Peter to birth the New Testament church.
You know when Jesus was raised from the dead and appearing, of one the first things He said is take me to Peter.
Come on man, God loves to redeem our failure. In fact, I'd say if you're a rock pointer you'll get what I'm saying, if you're not just let it go. But if we look at Peter's life and how God responds,
and if we don't believe that God loves to redeem our failure, we just might be needing a good old fashioned throat punch from Bill Bush. Like, come on, this is the truth man. He loves to redeem our failure. In fact, I would say this, that if you or I feel like God can't redeem
my failure, but he can redeem Peter's failure, then you and I think that we're better than the Apostle Peter. We believe that God expects more of us than one of the 12 Apostles. We all know that's silly, right? So what do we do with this conversation? I want to pray for you in just a moment.
And I just want to challenge us, maybe on two things. For some of us, knowing that failure is an event not a person, being willing to learn from it but not allowing it to become our identity, and embracing the fact that God loves to redeem our failure, many of us, maybe today's the day that we simply say, okay
that's it. I'm moving forward. I'm not going to allow myself to be haunted by regret, to be strapped down from that failure. We're going to move forward. Sure, we're big boys and girls. We might have to still do stuff that were circumstances of that failure.
That's right, we can't avoid that, but we don't take it on as our identity. Today's the day we move forward, no longer haunted with the regret of our failure. Or maybe for some of us, others of us, it's like, you know what? I need to step out of the boat. I need to trust God with something.
Because if I look at my life right now, if God doesn't come through, nothing changes. I'm not taking any risks for the glory of God and I'm not about to tell you what that should be, that's between you and the Lord. Some of us it's time to move forward. Some of us it's time to step out and walk by faith a little more.
Is that fair? Let's pray. Let's bow our heads and let's pray. Father God, we thank you that you're in this moment. Lord, thank you so much for choosing to give us this facet of Peter's life and showing us the moments where it looks like he failed, yet how you redeemed it and how you used him in such a profound way God.
So Lord we just we just want to call it what it is Lord. We have not failed in any way that you cannot redeem. God, may we be at peace with our failures. And give us the strength to move forward, and to continue to trust you. Not be afraid of failure, but put our faith in you God.
With our heads bowed, our eyes closed, I want us to ask you this, I wanna pray for you and we'll be done. Maybe you're sitting here and this is stirring in you, man. God's like nudging your heart or maybe like when Peter was talking, know that you're you're you're it's piercing your heart in a way you're convicted.
And God's just speaking to you in a very personal way. And and you just need to to make a statement to him like God I'm moving forward. I'm taking that step of faith that I know you've been asking me to do for a long time. I'm no longer going be haunted by my failures.
It's not my identity anymore. If you just want to personalise this even a little more, you're like man Scott, pray for me in that, include me in that prayer.
Our heads are bowed, our eyes are closed, you say yeah that's me Scott, just include me in that prayer, I want make this even more personal. Raise your hand real high if that's you, man that's me, I've got hands all over the place, of course. God we're raising our hands and we're lifting our heart and our voice to you.
In way, we're just putting our stake in the ground right now, saying by faith that failure is an event. It's not a person. It's not my identity. Yes, I've failed God. You know it all. Help me to learn from that failure. Help me to grow. Help me to not run from it, but to walk through it God.
And God give me the boldness to trust you again, to walk by faith, to do what you say. And even when I start to think God, because I'm a human God I can always reach out and you're there.
God redeem our failure and we thank you for it. And you're gonna get you're gonna get the glory for this Lord. We're gonna tell the story of what you've done in our life because you're so good, and we thank you for that in Jesus name. Amen.