July 5th, Sermon & Ministry Resources
"Who Will Rescue Me?" (Romans 7:15-25a)
Lectionary Readings — Proper 9 — July 5, 2026
Genesis 24:34-38,42-49,58-67; Psalm 45:10-17; Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19,25-30
Call to Worship (based on Romans 7:15-25a)
Leader: I do not understand my own actions — for the good I want to do, I do not do, and the very thing I hate is what I do.
People: We come honestly before You, Lord, knowing the war that rages within us. Our willing is one thing; our doing is another.
Leader: I delight in the law of God in my inmost self,
People: yet we feel another law at work in us, warring against the law of our minds, holding us captive.
Leader: It is no longer I alone who fail, but sin that still dwells within me.
People: We make no excuses and offer no defense. We bring our divided hearts and lay them open before You.
Leader: Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
People: We cry the same cry, O God. We look not to our own strength, for it has failed us, but to the mercy that reaches the helpless.
Leader: Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
People: The rescue we could never accomplish, He has accomplished. The chains are broken; the captive goes free.
All: We worship You, Father — the God who hears the groaning of Your people and answers our deepest cry with Your Son. From the law of sin and death You have set us free. To You alone be glory, now and forever. Amen.
Opening Prayer (based on Matthew 11:16-19,25-30)
Let us pray:
Father, we come to You this morning as people who are tired.
Not all of us could name the weight we carried through the door today — but You know it. You have always known it. And so we come, not because we have ourselves together, but because Your Son has spoken words over us that we could not speak over ourselves: Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
We come, Father. That is all we have to offer this morning — we come.
Forgive us for the ways we have looked for rest in every other place first. We have turned to distraction and found it empty. We have turned to busyness and found it exhausting. We have turned to the approval of others and found it unreliable. We confess that we are a generation not so different from the one Your Son described — hard to reach, slow to respond, finding fault with every voice You sent. We have heard the music and refused to dance. We have heard the mourning and refused to weep. Lord, have mercy on us for the hardness that settles so quietly into hearts that were once tender.
But You, Father — You are not hard. You are the One who hides these things from the wise and the learned and reveals them to infants. Not because ignorance is a virtue, but because empty hands receive what full hands cannot hold. So empty us of whatever we have been clutching that has kept us from receiving what You alone can give.
Thank You for Your Son — who is gentle and humble in heart, who does not crush the people who are already broken, who does not snuff out what is barely flickering. Thank You that His yoke is easy and His burden is light — not because the way is without cost, but because He carries the weight of it with us and for us.
Meet us now in this hour. Speak to the weary ones. Reach the ones who came in here doubting that anything said from this pulpit could touch what they are carrying. Give rest — the deep kind, the kind that goes beneath the surface and settles something in the soul that circumstance cannot disturb.
We ask it through Jesus Christ our Lord, the One in whom You are well pleased, and in whom we find our rest.
Amen.
[NOTE to Paid subscribers — scroll down for the full manuscript sermon]
Sermon Outline: "WHO WILL RESCUE ME?"
Based on Romans 7:15-25a
I. The Divided Heart (vv. 15–20)
II. The Defeated Will (vv. 21–23)
III. The Delivered Soul (vv. 24–25a)
Full Manuscript Sermon Below for Paid Subscribers
