This is an excerpt from the introduction of Stretched: A Study for Lent and the Entire Christian Life by Christopher Richmann (1517 Publishing, 2026).
We can bring our troubles, griefs, sorrows, and sins to Jesus, who meets us smack dab in the middle of our messy mob.
Confession isn’t a detour in the liturgy. It’s the doorway.

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Jesus is our confidence because he reveals truth from falsehood, right from wrong, and reality from appearance, so that we may rely on him for our every need of body, soul, and mind.
This week’s miracle invites you to engage in an honest consideration of something pressing for every believer at some time in their lives: God’s silence.
He will plead guilty on our behalf, and suffer the death sentence in our place.
Miracles, for all their wonder and encouragement, rely on the dazzling of our senses to work. Because miracle-faith produces sensory-faith, it is of a poor quality.
If the feeding of the 5000 invited an emphasis on Jesus’ COMPASSION, this week’s miracle invites a sermon focused on Jesus’ AUTHORITY.
There is no justification except by faith alone. The radical forgiveness itself puts the old to death and calls forth the new.
“Rembrandt goes so deep into the mysterious that he says things for which there are no words in any language.”
The Gospels function like literary essays, composed with a specific thesis and purpose in mind. Each account of Jesus’s life acts as a treatise to show us something about the person and work of the Savior.
Jesus’ miracle in this sermon, then, is a type of the compassion He has for your hearers. While they certainly have many physical needs, your hearers also (more fundamentally) need Jesus’ mercy and forgiveness.
He is our gold. He is our pure garment. He is our healing. He is our sanity. He is our wholeness.
Apart from God's word, we will judge the right to be wrong and evil people as good.
These parables invite us to consider the mysterious way of the reign of God. The Kingdom of God comes by grace to those who are seeking and not seeking it.