Our Heritage Baptist Church office is in a beautiful building in New York City, near the United Nations and Grand Central Station, with embassies and offices from around the world. It has three banks of very fast elevators.
But that’s where the trouble began.
Two of our people, Micah and Hattie, got stuck in one of the elevators. Hattie is blind, and Micah had picked her up to bring her to church. The man at the front desk immediately called the fire department and the police. They came quickly. As I saw one of the lead firefighters in the hallway, I asked, “Can I pray with you?”
He said, “Sure. I can always use prayer.” So, I prayed with him. While praying, something remarkable was happening outside.
The Fire Department of New York (FDNY) didn’t send just a couple of firefighters to check things out. They sent multiple rescue units and up to eight vehicles —among them: the FDNY Rescue Company 1.
Rescue 1 is the FDNY’s specialized elite rescue company, trained to respond to extremely difficult and dangerous situations. And as I watched all those firefighters arrive, I thought, “Wow! They are taking this seriously.”
And they should.
Two people were trapped in an elevator. Their lives were not necessarily in immediate danger, but they were trapped — and the firefighters treated their rescue as an important mission. They first had to determine exactly where the elevator was stuck. Then they brought another elevator car alongside it. The firefighters climbed out of that elevator, positioned a ladder, and carefully secured Hattie. Because Hattie is blind, they had to guide her every step of the way. She was helped across the top of the elevator and then lowered into the other elevator car.
After about an hour and a half, Hattie and Micah were finally out. And when Micah came into the lobby, he said something that really struck me. He said, “I was shocked and embarrassed at all the attention we were getting.”
Then he said something even more important.
He said, in effect, “I’m not a shy guy, but I thought about those firefighters. When they arrived, nobody looked at them and said, ‘Why are you here?’ They knew exactly why they were there. They were on a mission — to rescue people.”
That’s when it hit me.
We are God’s rescue unit.
I’m certainly not suggesting that we’re an elite group like Rescue Company 1. But we are God’s people. We have been called and commissioned by Jesus Christ. And we also have been given a rescue mission.
The firefighters understood that two people were trapped, and they took that seriously enough to bring their best resources, their training, their equipment, and their people to get them out.
How much more seriously should we take the Gospel?
Those firefighters were rescuing people from a difficult physical situation. But when we preach the Gospel, we’re dealing with something infinitely more important. We’re seeking to see people rescued from sin, from condemnation, and from hell — and brought by faith in Jesus Christ to forgiveness, eternal life, and heaven.
Paul said, “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men” (2 Corinthians 5:11, KJV).
- The question is not whether the people around us are worth rescuing. They are.
- The question is whether we take the rescue mission seriously enough to go after them.
And here’s something else that encouraged me: the first person Jesus sent on a personal rescue mission wasn’t one of the apostles.
After Jesus delivered the demon-possessed man in the region of the Gadarenes, Jesus told him, “Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee” (Mark 5:19 KJV). He had been rescued — and Jesus immediately sent him to tell others about the Rescuer.
That’s our mission.
We have been rescued by Christ, and now we are His rescue unit.
If the FDNY would send their best to rescue two people trapped in an elevator, how much more should we give our very best to rescue people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
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