Rescue. Lesson One: The Call

Transcription

1 Rescue It was the greatest small boat rescue o ever in the history of the United States Coast Guard. It happened on the night of February 18, o On that night of nights, a ferocious northeastern snowstorm came roaring into Cape Cod. Cape Cod was dangerous enough on its own. o In fact, seamen referred to the area as the graveyard of the Atlantic, and for good reason. o The sunken skeletons of more than three thousand shipwrecks were scattered across the ocean floor o around Cape Cod. The waters there, o particularly around the Chatham Bar were tumultuous enough to destroy a ship on a good day, o much less in a violent storm. The bar is a collection o of ever-shifting shoals with flood currents carrying ocean waves that can splinter small boats in a matter of seconds. Formed in the deep ocean, o the swells eventually surge toward the bar, gaining strength, speed, and size as they roll into shallower waters, o where they curl into fearsome breakers. These are the conditions in good weather. o Ships have been tossed end over end on calm sunny days on the Chatham bar. o Now the danger was amplified tenfold. This storm generated hurricane force winds o and waves as high as 60 feet tall,

2 for those that are wondering that s as tall as a 6-story building. It was much fiercer than expected o and the seas were more violent than anyone had anticipated. Ships and merchant vessels o that were unlucky enough to get caught in the grip of this storm found themselves in a dire situation. But none had it as bad o as a pair of oil tankers that were not traveling together but were in the same vicinity o as one another when the storm hit. The first tanker, the Fort Mercer, broke in half o under the assault of the heavy seas. But, as they were breaking up, o they managed to send out a distress call to a nearby Coast Guard station. The second ship was not as lucky. o The Pendelton broke in two so fast that there was no time to send a mayday. Thirty-three men, were left clinging o to the stern section of the Pendleton, drifting helplessly on the ocean and being tossed about o by mountainous waves. When the mayday from the Mercer o hit the Coast Guard station they rallied their rescue ships and quickly dispatched o the very best they had to race off into the storm and come to the assistance o of the devastated ship and her desperate crew. Multiple ships were dispatched o manned by the best crews the Coast Guard had to offer. However, nobody had any idea o that there were two broken vessels caught in the storm instead of just one.

3 That fact would be discovered o when an airplane that was sent out to assist in the recovery efforts made the startling discovery. Before he reached the area of the ocean o where the Mercer was known to be, the pilot of that plane observed half a ship o being tossed on the waves o and emblazoned on its hull was the name The Pendelton, not The Mercer as expected. He frantically passed the word. o Everybody was in shock. It was crazy enough to have one ship o broken in half by the storm, but now there were two. As the coast Guard came to grips o with the terrible situation the commander found himself out of options o the best had already been dispatched to the Mercer. o So he turned to a young, inexperienced Boatswain s Mate named Bernie Webber. o Webber, he says, pick yourself a crew. You got to take the out over the bar and assist that ship. Webber later said o that he felt his heart drop to his feet. He could picture himself taking the tiny wooden o 36 foot rescue boat over the hazardous Chatham Bar into the teeth of a snowstorm o that was generating 60 foot seas. o It was a mariner s worst nightmare. The images of that fateful day o were forever burned into Bernie s memory and he would later say

4 o that when he received the orders, he immediately thought of the Coast Guard s official motto: Semper Paratus, which is Latin for Always Ready. o However, he said he also remembered the unofficial Coast Guard motto which simply said: o You have to go out, but you do not have to come back. Nevertheless, he accepted the mission o without hesitation. Turning to the crew room, o he asked for volunteers. There were no trained boat crews left, all of those men o were already involved in the rescue attempt at the Mercer. So, from the ranks of the unqualified, o among those who had already been passed over for the three previous recue missions o that had launched earlier in the night, o Webber assembled a rag tag crew to sail into the teeth of the fiercest storm of their lives. In the blinding snow o of a freezing winter night s storm with waves that stood twice as tall as their boat was long, o against all odds they answered the call. Simple, reasonable, sensible seamanship o would have determined that it was pointless to throw their lives away o in what was sure to be a futile rescue effort, o but "rescue" is a word that erases common sense, abolishes reason, o wipes out calculation and leaves nothing but courage

5 o and a refusal to quit. That courage drove them into the storm o to make the most incredible rescue of the US Coast Guard s long and storied history. Our Summer Nights series o will follow the path of that rescue mission over the course of four lessons o so if you want to hear the rest of the story, I encourage you to be here on Wednesday nights! I originally planned to call this series Hoist Your Sails o The original impetus behind that theme was the fact that the Holy Ghost is likened to a wind in several passages of scripture. o And the sail boat makes a good image for what it means to lead a Spirit Led life. o A Spirit led people will follow the leading and direction of the Holy Ghost in every area of their lives o just as the winds drive a sail boat. The reason why so many are not spirit led o is because they fail to hoist their sails and harness the wind. The topics that we could discuss o in a series of this nature are numerous, however, as I began to prepare for this series, o I felt God directing me to hone in on a single theme so these four lessons will center around o a simple theme: Rescue o We are called to reach the world with the gospel, o before it is too late. Most of us do not realize the urgency of this mission. o While it is hard to imagine what it would be like to be placed in that position, most of us can understand

6 why a crew of 4 young men o were willing to risk their own lives and sail into a devastating storm when they learned that o the crew of an oil tanker would surely be lost at sea o if someone did not come to their rescue. Its easy to see the urgency in the storm. o All of a sudden the mission becomes more than just the ordinary task of their daily job, it gets transformed into a recue mission o and, as I ve already said, something about a rescue makes us suspend all rational thought and believe that, for the sake of a life or lives, o we can do the impossible. o That s what compels men to run back into burning buildings, the belief that the need o out weighs the risk. When it comes to our mission of reaching the lost, o we need to realize that it has that same sense of urgency. A need was recognized. The first step to launching o that heroic rescue attempt was that someone had to recognize the need. If that plane had never flown over o and realized that the Pendleton had been broken in half by the storm, o then all of the rescue efforts would have been focused on the Mercer and the crew of the Pendleton o would have been forever lost. If the church is going to be mobilized o into rescue mode, if we are going to look beyond our limitations o and launch into the mission

7 that we were called to do, then we must get a glimpse of eternity. We must realize o how serious the situation really is. I stood at the grave o of a long time friend today and realized, once again, just how fleeting life really is. If we are going to reach our world o then we must realize how quickly this life passes and how long eternity lasts. With that in mind, then o we must realize the desperate need of every lost soul to find salvation o before it is too late. Make no mistake, o the thing that sent our young heroes out over the Chatham Bar o and into the teeth of a ferocious storm was the vision of those 33 men o clinging to the remnant of a broken ship. The lives hanging in the balance o compelled them to risk theirs. Likewise, the reality of eternity must grip us o if we are ever going to rise to answer the call to evangelism. In the light of eternity, o we cannot afford to hold our peace. We cannot afford to be politically correct. o We cannot afford to play it safe and hope we don t offend anyone. o It is better that they be offended and escape hell than that we make their journey to hell o a comfortable one! An order was given. Once the need was recognized, o an order was given. We have our orders.

8 o They are recorded in the word of God. Mark 16:15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. Matthew 10:7 And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Our orders are to sail o into the stormy seas of this life and reach out to a lost world. Preaching the kingdom of heaven o everywhere we go. This isn t just a message to preachers, o this is an order for every believer. Preach the kingdom. Reach the lost. Jude said it this way Jude 1: But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, That s what it means to be spirit led. o Hoist your sails. Pray in the Holy Ghost. Allow the Holy Ghost to compel you. 21 Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. 22 And of some have compassion, making a difference: 23 And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire Pulling them from the fire. o Until we realize that is what we are doing Pulling them from the fire. o Until we realize how urgent the mission is, we will never be effective in reaching the lost. A crew responded. The most important thing that happened o on that stormy winter night is that when Bernie Webber stepped into that crew room o and asked for volunteers,

9 a group of men answered the call. Make no mistake. o They were not the most qualified. They would form a boat crew o that had never sailed together before. One member of that ragtag crew o had never been to sea on a rescue mission, o much less sailing into the violent fury of a storm of this magnitude. But those four men answered the call. o Not because they were the most qualified but because they were what was available. Listen, I ve heard it my whole life, o God doesn t call the qualified. He qualifies the called! God s not looking for the best, o he s looking for someone who is willing to sail their ship into the stormy seas of this life to rescue those who will be lost without the gospel message. My main purpose, o on these hot summer nights, is going to be to compel you to answer the call. o To reach the lost. To personally bring someone to Christ. Close In Mathew 4:1, Jesus said, o Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. Listen to what Jesus was saying. o Follow me and I will MAKE you fishers of men. He didn t say follow me o because you are fishers of men. I will make you. I will equip you. o If you will just answer the call. He told Moses, don t worry o about what you are going to say,

10 when the time comes, I will put the words in your mouth. o All too often we focus on our inabilities and miss the fact that the heroes in the storm o are very rarely the most qualified, instead they are simply those o who were willing to go. Our first question of this summer series is simple: o Who will answer the call? There s a call going out from heaven s throne o for volunteers to sail into the stormy seas of this life and reach the lost, pulling them from the fire, before it is too late. o Will you answer that call?