In their preaching groups, our second year Cornhillers are working through Colossians – a tough book for them, a real stretch. Last week we got to Colossians 2 and that particularly vexing baptism verse:

In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. (Col 2.11-12).

As I was studying, getting ready for my preaching group, it dawned on me that both credo-baptists (of which I am one) and paedo-baptists misuse these two verses.

• Credo-baptists misuse it by building a theology of baptism that says our baptism reflects events past which happened at conversion, namely that we have died with Christ and also have been raised with him. I confess to using it that way myself. But it's not precisely what the text says, is it? The text says that the dying and being raised happened with baptism, not that baptism is somehow a picture of what happened in the past. 
• Paedo-baptists do not get off the hook either. This text is also used to make a link between the Old Covenant circumcision and New Covenant baptism. But that is also not what the text says. In fact, it makes no reference to Old Covenant circumcision at all. Rather it is referring to the circumcision of the heart (granted that is an OT phrase, see Deut 10.16) which is not a covenant sign but a conversion entry point.

We both need to be more humble before the text. Moo, BTW, has a helpful comment on this in his Pillar commentary: 

The New Testament connects our coming to Christ (being converted and initiated into the new covenant community) to faith, to repentance, to the gift of the Spirit, and to water baptism, in various combinations. Any of these, in a kind of metonymy, could be used to connote the whole experience—implying, of course, in each instance, the presence of all the others. Water baptism, then, as a critical New Testament rite intimately connected to our conversion experience, could be used as shorthand for the whole experience. (p203)

John Stott used to have this reading plan: one hour a day, one three hour period a week, one day a month and one week a year. I'm not sure I can keep up with that much structured reading (though I do read a lot). However, once a year I try to follow the "one week a year" pattern. Last week was my week and it was….mostly….reading. It didn't quite work out (a preaching group, a ministers gathering and an evening lecture interrupted the flow), but it was pretty good.

We think this is such a good idea that we give the Cornhill students a reading week too. This year, if you're interested, they will be reading either Pilgrim's Progress or Idols by Julian Hardyman (first years) or What is the mission of the church? by DeYoung and Gilbert (second years).

I tried to choose a balance of books, alongside spending some time in 2 Corinthians and Colossians for my Bible study. Here were my choices. I'll blog on some of them over the next few days, if you're interested:

• For personal encouragement I read Steve Wilmshurt's Mark in the Welwyn Commentary series. Truth is, I was given this to review, but it turned out to be a very warm pastoral and spiritually helpful book for my own walk with Christ. And good to get back into Mark's gospel again.
• For intellectual stretch (not too hard with me) I read James Sire's Why Good Arguments Often Fail. I've read this before, but wanted to come back to it again as I know it had some helpful things about preaching.
• For role related challenge, I picked up Leaders Who Last by Dave Kraft. More of this shortly,
• For preaching (that is after all my job, to help others preach) I read a manuscript of Teaching 1 Timothy by Angus Macleay, one of our 2012 books.
• And for an historical slant, I read the new biography of Bonhoeffer by Eric Mataxas. Again, watch out for a post.

As I said, more on some of these shortly. But let me commend a reading week. It's something well worth pursuing. Oh, and I also read some kids books with the….kids. Nice.

When you're planning a sermon series, there comes a point when you have to decide how you're going to divide up the book. Note this is even true if you take one week at a time and don't announce sections in advance. At the very least (in this situation) you are making weekly decisions – though I would contend that if you're going to take that approach (and I have sometimes), then your pre-work should have given some time to this question – otherwise there is a danger your sermon series could feel very bitty.

Now you have to make some crunch decisions. Take a book like Numbers. Is this going to be a three year series, or a shorter one! I would suggest that with such an unfamiliar book you don't want to rush things, but then neither do you want to get bogged down. There are obviously great benefits in going slowly – it gives a chance to tackle all the issues and also does justice to all your study. But, conversely. larger sections gives people a broader sweep of the issues the book raises and which we need to take to our hearts.

The answer is….. whatever is right for you. It will depend so much on context, congregation, location, style – all manner of things, in fact. I'm probably somewhere in the middle. I want to do justice to a book like Numbers, but I also recognise that a sermon series is unlikely to cover everything – these are not expository lectures I am planning. So here, for what it's worth, is my sermon planning for Numbers, a series I called "Homeward Bound" – though I might not stick with that title another time through. I've given each sermon a punchy one word title which is my effort to summarise the direction of the section. 

1. Numbers 1-4: Numbers
2. Numbers 5-6: Purity
3. Numbers 7-8: Worship
4. Numbers 9-10: Preparation
5. Numbers 11-12: Discontent
6. Numbers 13-14: Rebellion
7. Numbers 15: Grace
8. Numbers 16-18: Rejection
9. Numbers 19: Cleansing
10. Numbers 20-21: Salvation
11. Numbers 22-24: Blessing
12. Numbers 25: Seduction
13. Numbers 26-30: Beginnings
14. Numbers 31: Victory
15. Numbers 32: Disunity
16. Numbers 33-36: Inheritance

Mrs R and I had a hot date last weekend going to see Bach's St Matthew's Passion at the National Theatre. Wonderful stuff if you like that sort of thing. And many of the words (it was an English translation) taken straight from the gospel account, of course. Edifying too, then. But it all ended rather sadly.  

The Passion (perhaps the clue was in the name) ends with the death of Jesus and the carrrying away of the body by Joseph of Arimathea. Then some of the narrating cast sing a series of questions to answer which, loosely translated, mean "Where is my Jesus?"

For those who know the gospel accounts, it is entirely unsatisfactory. The normally reserved Mrs R told me later that she was tempted to stand up and shout "He's alive!" though I'm rather glad she didn't! But she would have been right. We need the cross and the resurrection, otherwise the death of Jesus is just another hero story and not the story of the salvation of the world.

"He was delivered over to death for our sins and raised to life for our justification" (Romans 4.25). Don't let your preaching, therefore, be just like the Passion. Tell the full story.

Just last weekend I preached 2 Cor 2.12-3.6 – a passage in which Paul defends his ministry to the Corinthian brothers. In many ways it's a fairly straightforward passage to exegete. There are one or two hurdles, but on the whole exegesis is pretty plain. 

But what about application? There are quite a few passages like this where Paul is talking about himself, his ministry, or perhaps praying for a particular church. How do we draw lines of applications from such passages? We must, of course, otherwise our preaching will be nothing more than dry lecture information (and perhaps we are gullty of that?). Here are my convictions about that particular passage, all of which I tried to convey in the sermon as I tried to move to 2011 in East London.

• Paul's ministry as an Apostle is unique and so we must be careful about drawing direct lines of application without thinking it through. I am not Paul, and neither are my people.
• Paul's ministry is given to him to (in part) equip the saints in works of ministry themselves. That is what Eph 4.16-17 says. Therefore the principles that underpin Paul's ministry should also (with care) underpin ours. Every saint in the local church has works of service (or ministry) to do, and we can learn from Paul.
• Paul's ministry was one of church planting. Our ministry is (for the most part) rooted within the church, so we must take care not to create individualistic principles.

If you're interested, I used the three pictures Paul uses in the passage to make my points. This is a Sunday evening service at our church where the style is more informal and we are trying to engage with many people for whom English is not a first language and preaching is a relatively new concept. So we have a short (for us) 25 minute sermon and then 15 minutes of Q&A. My principles were:

• The open door: I called this gospel focus, making the most of every opportunity (v12-13)
• The pleasing fragrance: I called this gospel calling: keeping the main thing the main thing even when it is the stench of death (v14-17)
• The heart letter: I called this gospel reality: our message is one of the Spirit and therefore life, not of the law (3.1-6)

We've a small staff, but we're gradually getting round to transferring old conference audio from tape to digital. Latest are four talks by Peter Adam from the Senior Minister's Conference in 1993. Peter is the principal of Ridley Theological College in Melbourne. Click here for the free talks on:

1. Foundation of the Ministry of The Word
2. What then is Preaching?
3. The Practice of Preaching
4. Evangelical Protestantism

If you want some audio to start the week with, here are the most recent sermons from the PT directors:

• Christopher preached last Sunday at St Mary's Maidenhead. He took the church weekend on the psalms and you can listen to his sermon on Psalm 150 here. 
• Vaughan is just starting a series at St Ebbe's on Luke 6 – the sermon on the plain – and you can hear the first three sermons here, here and here. 
• I've just come back from preaching Numbers in Asia, but I took a break from that book and preached Ezekiel 1 (a last minute change) on the Sunday morning as the church prepared for a period of praying together. You can hear the audio here.

In the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Joanna asks Huck what it is that ministers actually do.

"Oh, nothing much. Loll around, pass the plate – and one thing or another. But mainly they don't do nothing."

"Well then, what are they for?" asks the curious Joanna.

Huck has the answer. "Why, they're for style. Don' you know nothing?"

This great Mark Twain quote is remembered by Derek Prime and Alistair Begg in their excellent book, On being a pastor (p149). This week I've been teaching the Cornhillers about a pastor's private ministry (as opposed to his public ministry) and realised it's a much neglected topic. There's an excellent chapter by Johnny Prime in PT's own The Practical Preacher – here are some other resources on private ministry:

• Reforming Pastoral MInistry edited by John Armstrong – some good stuff here
• The Reformed Pastor by Richard Baxter
• The classic text, The Christian Ministry by Charles Bridges
• There's also a good article in the Sepember 2009 Briefing "One sheep at a time, the power of one-to-one ministry."
• If you can make it through, Gregory the Great has some winsome advice in his Pastoral Rule (you can google it or it is in the second series of the Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers volume 12)

At the very least, make sure you're not just for style!

Numbers has a bit of everything – law, story, poetry, prophecy – which makes it an exciting book to read and preach. But it also means that the tricky issues raised by OT preaching ALL come up in Numbers, not least of which is the herem holy destruction like that against the Midianites (Numbers 31). If you're preaching these sorts of passages, you've surely got to talk about the issue and understand it for yourself. One book I've found very helpful is Show them no mercy which includes an excellent chapter by Tremper Longman III on this very subject. It is in the 4/5 views series produced by Zondervan . I found it useful for understanding the issue myself and also understanding what other people think, even if some of them are far from being mainstream evangelical views. Worth the £8 it costs.