God's Bailout For Man's Sinful Condition

Evangelist Herman E. Wesley III

God’s Bail-Out Of Man’s Sinful Condition

Ephesians 2:1-7 (New International Version)

PRELIMINARIES

INTRODUCTION

The subject assigned to me for today’s presentation is:

GOD’S BAILOUT OF MAN’S SINFUL CONDITION, and the text assigned comes from Ephesians 2:1-7. I’m reading from the New International Version:

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As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

Now before I begin, I think I’d better define our primary term.

BAIL-OUT.

Wikipedia defines bail-out as an act of giving capital to a company in danger of failing, in an attempt to save it from bankruptcy, insolvency, or total liquidation and ruin; or to allow a failing company to fail gracefully without spreading contagion, or disease.

BAIL-OUT became a popular word in our modern vernacular during the last few months of the presidency of George W. Bush, and continued in practice under President Barack Obama. However, long before we knew what the word meant, the process of the Bail-Out had been in practice since the beginning of time. From the very moment God created man, God has been involved in Spiritual or Divine Bail-Outs! He bailed out Adam when He saw that it wasn’t good for Adam to mate with goats, donkeys, chimpanzees! God Bailed him out by creating woman! That’s a Divine Bail-Out! It was a Bail-Out when God didn’t kill Adam and Eve right there in the Garden of Eden when they disobeyed, but drove them out and forced Adam to work the soil...that was a Divine Bail-Out! It was a Bail-Out when God destroyed the whole world with water, but saved Noah and his household because Noah found grace and favor in the eyes of the Lord...that was a Divine Bail-Out! And brother’s and sister’s, God has been in the Bail-Out business ever since!

Now since we have a limited time frame to work with, I want to share three things with you that I see in this very information packed text:

THE NEED FOR THE BAIL-OUT.

THE PROCESS OF THE BAIL-OUT.

THE RESULT OF THE BAIL-OUT.

THE NEED FOR THE BAIL-OUT.

According to our text, there was a definite need for man to be Bailed Out! Now, remember, the definition we are working with says that a Bail-Out is an act of giving capital to a company in danger of failing, and without a doubt, man was in a failing condition, and we needed to be saved from ourselves. Verse 1 says:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.

Mankind is lost without Jesus. Without Jesus, we are without hope. Without Jesus we are in the caldron of our own transgressions and sins. Do I need to list them? Alcoholism, adultery, fornication, lying, stealing, murder, drunkenness, debauchery of all kinds, homosexuality, hateful, prideful, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. Without Christ we are like a ship without a sail, drifting aimlessly on the ocean of life, susceptible to the stormy gales of destruction and damnation. Read the newspaper, or turn on the news....destruction abounds everywhere. Kidnappings, murder, terrorism...people have no boundaries when they are without Christ, and will do any and everything their heart desires. This is a sad existence when it is an existence without Christ. Paul intimates in Romans 6:19 that when we are in the flesh we yield our members as servants to uncleanness and to iniquity. We were numbered among the living dead:

Getting up in the morning...but dead.

Making breakfast in the kitchen...but dead.

Putting our keys in the ignition and traveling off to work...but dead.

We looked alive, smelled alive, behaved like we were alive, but without Christ we were dead!

Dead to salvation!

Dead to reconciliation!

Dead to redemption!

DEAD, DEAD, DEAD!

All of our activities, all of our movement, all of our wretchedness, even when we fooled ourselves into thinking it was righteousness, were never counted towards our goodness, because we were dead! We needed a Savior! We needed a Deliverer! We needed a Bail-Out!