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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The scandal of this text for the Jewish people is the inclusion of all nations and peoples into the Holy House of the LORD.
He will plead guilty on our behalf, and suffer the death sentence in our place.
Who are we if neither vice nor virtue will make us whole?
It is important to see how the LORD does NOT answer the questions Job and his friends have been wrestling with.
Here we have the other major theme within Romans: God will have mercy on whom He has mercy, and He will have compassion on whom He has compassion
If the feeding of the 5000 invited an emphasis on Jesus’ COMPASSION, this week’s miracle invites a sermon focused on Jesus’ AUTHORITY.
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.
The lifeblood of Christ is the treasury that defines personal worth – your worth, my worth. Preach that; the price tag on your soul.
This food, already purchased and freely given in our pericope, is a foretaste of the feast to come as well; the marriage feast of the Lamb in His Kingdom which has no end.
Apart from God's word, we will judge the right to be wrong and evil people as good.
God created humanity in his image and then inhabited that image. Not just for 33 years, but for eternity thereafter.
To dwell with a Holy God in their camp, Israel lead holy lives. Anything standing in the way of and threatening this holy relationship must be avoided or eliminated.