June 28th, Sermon & Ministry Resources

"Whose Slave are You?" (Romans 6:12-23)

Jun 22, 2026

∙ Paid

Lectionary Readings — Proper 8 — June 28, 2026

Genesis 22:1-14; Psalm 13; Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:40-42

Call to Worship (based on Romans 6:12-23)

Leader: Do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies. Do not offer yourselves to sin as instruments of unrighteousness — for sin is not your master.

People: We are not under law but under grace. We come this morning as those who have been brought from death to life.

Leader: Once we were slaves to sin — bound to it, shaped by it, carried wherever it led. But thanks be to God, we have been set free.

People: We have been set free — not to do as we please, but to become what we were made to be: servants of righteousness, children of the living God.

Leader: The wages of sin is death. That is the end of the road the old life offered — not freedom, not fulfillment, but death.

People: But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. We did not earn it. We could not purchase it. It was given — freely, fully, finally.

Leader: We present ourselves to God this morning — not as those who are perfect, but as those who belong to Him. Our members as instruments of righteousness. Our hearts yielded to the One who bought us.

People: We are no longer our own. We have been freed from sin and bound — gratefully, willingly — to God.

All: We worship You, Father — the God who liberates, the God who transforms, the God whose gift is life where there was only death. May this hour be an offering of our whole selves to You. To Your name be all glory. Amen.

Opening Prayer (based on Matthew 10:40-42)

Let us pray:

Heavenly Father,

We come before You this morning humbled by the weight of a simple truth: that to receive Your Son is to receive You, and to receive You is to receive the One who sent Him. We did not earn that welcome. We did not negotiate for it. You extended it to us in grace, and we are still learning what it means to live inside it.

Lord, these words remind us that You are paying attention to small things. A cup of cold water. A quiet act of welcome. A moment of kindness offered to someone in Your name, unwitnessed by anyone but You. We confess that we have sometimes reserved our faith for the grand gestures — the visible moments, the measurable results — while overlooking the ten thousand ordinary opportunities You place before us every week to receive one another, to serve one another, and to honor You in the doing of it.

Teach us, Father, to see the people in front of us the way You see them — as those You have sent, those You have placed in our path, those whose presence in our lives is never accidental. Make us a people who welcome the stranger, who notice the overlooked, who offer what we have without calculating whether it is enough to matter.

And as we open Your Word this morning, remind us that faithfulness in small things is not a lesser calling — it is the very texture of the life You invite us into. May Your Son be honored in every act of welcome we extend, every cup offered, every door opened in His name.

In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Amen