Almighty God, we approach Thee
in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and we give Thee our thanks
that once again Thou has provided us with an opportunity of coming
into Thy presence and worshipping Thee. We believe that this is
the greatest privilege that men and women upon the face of this
earth ever have, to be able to worship their God and Creator. And there have been a lot of
things have taken our time and attention today We have been
crowded out by the demands of the day, by our responsibilities
and duties, by some of the challenges and trials that we have to face
day by day. And yet thou has brought us to
this quiet hour. Thou has given us a sense of
peace and solitude as we have gathered here in the quietness
of this room. and we pray that thou will be
pleased to come amongst us and to minister to us. While we have
a desire to honour thee, our God, we are well aware that we
sometimes find it very difficult to approach thee and to understand
thee. We ask, therefore, that thou
wilt help us this night, and to whatever extent our abilities
are required, that thou wilt open our eyes to see the Lord
Jesus Christ, and that thou wilt bless us and help us to approach
thee in spirit and in truth. We pray for those who are not
here this evening who might otherwise have been. We pray for those
who have upheld this little service in prayer and for those who have
arranged for it taking place. We thank thee for this rescue
mission and the work that is done here. And we pray that the
glory of God might be honoured amongst those who labour and
who receive its benefits. For Jesus' sake we ask these
things. Amen. I want to read a chapter from
the Gospel of Isaiah in the Old Testament. Isaiah was a prophet
and he's regarded as one of the major prophets in the Old Testament. but his prophecy is full of the
Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore, for that reason,
it is sometimes called the Gospel of Isaiah. And this is Isaiah
53. And you just listen and see if you can hear mentioned, not
by name, but things, attributes, characteristics that point us
to the Lord Jesus Christ. This is Isaiah chapter 53, and
this is what the Word of God says. Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the
Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him
as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground. He hath
no form nor comeliness, and when we shall see him, there is no
beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected
of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we
hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised, and we
esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten
of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions,
he was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace
was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep
have gone astray, We have turned every one to his own way, and
the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed
and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He is brought
as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers
is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison
and from judgment, And who shall declare his generation? For he
was cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgression
of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the
wicked, and with the rich in his death, because he had done
no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased
the Lord to bruise him. He hath put him to grief, when
thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin. He shall see his seed,
he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall
prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of
his soul and shall be satisfied. By his knowledge shall my righteous
servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall
divide the spoil with the strong, because he hath poured out his
soul unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he
bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. Amen. May God be pleased to bless
to us this reading from his word. As Larry mentioned in his introduction,
I'm here as a stand-in tonight. I'm here as a substitute for
my good friend Mitch Oppheim. Mitch has been coming to the
rescue mission for many, many years. I dare say more years
than anyone else here has been coming to the rescue mission.
Well, Mitch can't be here this evening, but he asked me if I
would speak for him. And that's a task that I'm happy
to do. If I had said to Mitch, Mitch,
what will I say when I stand in front of all of those people?
Mitch would have said to me, well, Peter, you just tell them
the truth. You just tell them the truth. Tell them about the
Lord Jesus Christ. So tonight, for a little while,
the time that I've got available, and I'm not going to weary you,
but tonight for a little while, I want to, in this rescue mission,
talk about the greatest rescue mission that ever was. The greatest rescue mission that
ever was. Now, maybe you've got some ideas
about what a rescue mission might look like or sound like or appear
to be. And I'm not talking about this
building. I'm talking about the rescue mission that a brave person
might be able to do. I come from the United Kingdom,
and in the north of England, in a place called Northumberland,
we have a story about a little girl, a little girl called Grace
Darling. And Grace was the daughter of
a lighthouse keeper. And one night she was looking
out of the window and she realised that in the midst of the storm
there was a ship out in the rocks in the bay that had split in
two. And one half of the ship had
been driven down the coast and the other half, with a number
of people on it, had been driven against the rocks in a little
piece of rock out in the bay. It was too dangerous to send
the lifeboat out and it was too far for it to come. So Grace
Darling and her father got into a four-man rowing boat and they
headed out into the storm. That was the story of how that
young woman with her father saved a number of passengers from that
sunken ship in the midst of the storm. Or maybe you know about
another rescue mission. Maybe you've heard about a man
called Oscar Schindler. Oskar Schindler was credited
with having saved 1,200 Jewish men and women during World War
II by giving them jobs in his factory rather than them being
sent to the death chambers and the gas chambers. Or maybe you've heard about what's
called the First Battle of Mogadishu, It's a little bit closer to home
for some of us. And that was the story of a number
of United States soldiers who got caught in a city in Somalia
called Mogadishu. And they were trapped there and
they were surrounded by thousands of enemies. They needed to be
rescued. Maybe you've seen the film Black
Hawk Down. That was the story of the rescue
mission that was sent in to recover those soldiers. What is it that makes a rescue
mission great? What is it that makes a rescue
mission successful? Is it the number of people that
are saved? Is it perhaps the danger that
the rescuer is in when he or she makes that attempt to save
those who are in need? And I guess there has to be a
success for any rescue mission to be termed as great and maybe
it's a mix of all of those things that makes a great rescue mission. But you know, the Bible tells
us that the greatest rescue mission of all was not any of those that
I've mentioned. It was a mission that was undertaken
by the Son of God by the Lord Jesus Christ to save his people
from their sins. And it was a successful mission,
and a great number were saved, but it came at a tremendous cost
to the rescuer. There's a little verse in the
book of 1st Timothy, you find it in chapter 1 and verse 15,
and it says this, this is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation
or acceptance, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners,
of whom I am chief. It's a faithful saying, says
Paul. Paul was the writer of that verse.
He was writing to a young man called Timothy. And he says,
it's a faithful saying. It's true. Timothy, this is true. This is important. This is helpful. I want you to hear this and I
want you to remember it. Nobody wants to be deceived by
a liar or by a con man. So we want to hear what is true
and we want to hear what is faithful. The Bible is God's book and the
Bible is true because God never tells lies. It is trustworthy. That means that we can trust
it. It is faithful. And Paul says it's worthy of
acceptance. It's worth believing this message. If something is true, only a
fool would not believe it when confronted with the evidence. And furthermore, if something
is true, it remains true whether you believe it or not. And so
when we talk about this rescue mission that was undertaken by
the Son of God, we see that it's the greatest rescue mission because
the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished the salvation and the deliverance
of those he came to save. A little saying, I think it's
a song lyric, and it says that there's none so blind as those
who will not see the truth. And this is a faithful and acceptable
saying from the Word of God. Jesus Christ came into the world
to save sinners. It's the greatest rescue mission
ever. Lord Jesus Christ left his father's
presence in order to undertake such a challenging task that
would ultimately lead him to the cross, where he would die
as the substitute for his people, taking their sins upon himself. The Lord Jesus Christ came into
the world to save sinners. He took their sin, and the Lord
Jesus Christ was successful He did not simply come into the
world to make salvation possible. He actually saved. What would
we say to somebody who went into a place of danger in order to
make rescue possible for the people that were in danger? We
would say, Don't make salvation possible. Don't make rescue possible. Rescue us. That's what we need. If you simply say you're making
rescue possible, that means that we are still not rescued. And
that was what the Lord Jesus Christ did. He saved his people
from their sin. The Lord Jesus Christ was successful
because he saved every single person for whom he came to die. All those that were committed
into his hands, all those that were given to him by his Father's
will and purpose, all those he was called to save, he most certainly
and assuredly delivered from their dangerous place, that place
of condemnation and the promise of hell and judgment. We said what makes a great rescue
is that the rescuer has to be in danger himself. And the Lord
Jesus Christ paid the greatest price in order to rescue his
people from their sin. He paid the price of his own
life. He shed his own blood. He died at Calvary because that
was the price that was demanded for the liberty and the freedom
and the deliverance of his people. The greatest rescue mission ever
was accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ for sinners like
me and like you. So what? So what? Maybe you'll say to me, you know,
I really don't care too much about Grace Darling and her little
boat that went out into the bay in the storm. And I don't care
too much about Oscar Schindler. But you would have cared. if
you were one of those people that were hanging on to the rock
in the middle of the wind and the waves. And you would have
cared if you had been one of those Jews getting ready to be
deported to Belsen. And maybe you say, I don't even
care about the American soldiers that went down in Mogadishu.
Ah, but how those men longed that their commanding officers
would send in a tank and send in a battle group that would
deliver them out of that terrible, dangerous situation. You see,
what makes the difference about whether or not we care about
being rescued? It's whether or not we know we're
in danger and whether or not we understand the consequences
of being separated from God for all eternity. Hell is a reality,
my friends. There is a day of judgment coming. And if you say you don't care
much about Jesus Christ, I'll say, well, that's okay. That's
okay. I'm sorry that that's the case.
But it's okay, because you probably don't think you need to be saved
anyway. You see, Paul, he knew that the
value of that work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the greatness of
that rescue mission that Jesus Christ undertook, was that Paul
himself could testify, see me? I'm the greatest of sinners,
and I need to be rescued. He said, I'm the chief of sinners.
And that wasn't exaggeration. He understood what it was to
stand before a holy God without being saved by the blood of Jesus
Christ. The greatest rescue mission that
was ever undertaken on the face of this earth was undertaken
by the Lord Jesus Christ. And if one day the Lord opens
your eyes to see the terrible danger that your everlasting
soul is in, then you will finally understand how necessary it is
for the Lord Jesus Christ to save you. On that day, you will
cry out, God, be merciful to me, the sinner. and I hope it
will not be too late. Thank you very much for your
attention. Let's have a word of prayer and then the meeting
will be over. Almighty God, that has given
us these few moments here together to think about thee and to remember
the Lord Jesus Christ and all that he accomplished on the cross.
We pray that these things which have been said and thought about
will not be quickly lost, but that we will carry the thought
of them and their memory in our hearts and in our minds, and
that thy Holy Spirit will be pleased to apply grace and truth
and peace to our hearts on the basis of the work of Jesus Christ. We thank thee for the greatest
rescue mission ever and we pray that thou wilt lead us into the
experience of being rescued by the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.