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Well, it's our joy to gather again on a Sunday morning as the redeemed people of God, those who have been ransomed from sin by the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and as we begin this morning, if you do not know Christ, we invite you to a crucified and risen Savior who gave himself for sinners just like you that you could be redeemed and you can walk out of this room today knowing that your sins are forgiven if you would simply repent and put your faith in Christ, and we invite you to Christ as we begin this morning. And for those of us that are here as the redeemed people of God, we take it as a privilege and a gift from God to turn to his word to see how he would instruct us today and we come to the book of Ephesians 6 and I invite you to turn to Ephesians 6 as the Apostle Paul gives us another practical outworking of the nature of salvation and, you know, in our day and age, it's just very important for us to recognize something very fundamental and essential about the nature of Christian salvation. It is so common and perhaps you've grown up in this environment as I somewhat did as well, to think that you pray a prayer to be saved and God saves you and says, "I'll take you to heaven and not send you to hell and then however else you want to live your life for the rest of your time on earth doesn't really matter, you know, and you'll still in end up in heaven in the end." Well, that's not the nature of salvation at all. You see, when Christ gave himself on the cross to save sinners, he wasn't simply flipping a switch on the direction that you would go when you die, Jesus Christ died to make you his own; that you would belong to him and that you would serve him on earth all of the days of your life and that you would increasingly be conformed to be like him in the life that he has given to you, and that has practical ramifications for our day-to-day lives. Every aspect of your life is affected and influenced by the fact that you belong to Christ. That seems to be getting lost more and more in our superficial evangelical age.

But you can see how salvation is meant to permeate like yeast that grows through a whole leaven of lump, it is meant to influence and impact every aspect of your life; you can see that by the passages of Scripture that we have been studying. Paul, having gone through a long praise to God and an explanation of Christian salvation, Paul having said that God raised us from spiritual death and bestowed grace upon us, what does he do after he has laid all of that out in the first three chapters and also into chapters 4 and 5? Well, if you went by what modern teachers tell us today you'd think that he was ready to close and say amen but that's not what he does at all, is it? What Paul does is he says, "Now that I have laid out the nature of salvation and called you to walk in a manner worthy of your salvation," what does he do at the end of chapter 5? He starts talking about marriage, the most intimate personal human relationship that there ever could be. He speaks to wives and husbands and says, "This is how salvation is to play out in your lives." He moves on and he speaks to children and he says, "Children, you honor your father and mother. Obey your parents because in the Lord this is what is right." Then he addresses parents and says, "Parents, here's how you are to raise your children, as Christians." My point being, it's a major broad point for you to see, very crucial, especially if you're new to the Bible, very crucial to understand that Paul takes the Apostle Paul, the appointed representative by the Lord Jesus himself, he takes salvation and then he runs it through every area, the most intimate areas of our lives, showing us that salvation has impact on the daily way that you live. Moment by moment there is nothing that escapes from the permeating influence of Scripture, of Christ, and of the Holy Spirit on your lives...