The work of the ministry requires boldness. There is a need for boldness in almost every aspect of ministry; from preaching the Word, to confronting sinning church members, ministry contains many challenges that must be overcome by bold men. But this boldness is not self-confidence, but boldness in Christ and confidence in the power of God and his Gospel.

Well, it is a privilege and joy to be here with you this morning and to bring some thoughts. I must confess that last night, late last night, I rewrote everything that I'd prepared. The Lord guided me slightly in a different way. The apostle says this, and I read the passage to you, For yourselves, brethren, know our entrance in unto you, that it was not in vain. But even after that we had suffered before, and were shamefully entreated, as ye know at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention." Every person, I believe, has a scar on their body.

I've already seen, some of you, you have scars on your faces. If you were to Take off your shirt, you might have scars under it. Every person, there is no person in this world, if they have lived, unless they have lived in a glass box somewhere all their life, they will have scars on their bodies. Every Christian has scars. But then furthermore, every minister of the Gospel, if they have been faithful, they would have deep scars.

Deep scars that sometimes you feel it, when it is pressed again it is brought onto the surface. How often it is the same things come up and up and up again. Sometimes you might think of those things daily, the things that have caused those scars in your life. And my task this morning is, in the time allocated to me, to speak to you about this character of boldness in leadership. Boldness.

In this passage, in the opening of it, it's a wonderful thing. It's a very positive thing that the apostle describes of a faithful minister of Jesus Christ. And the ministry, he says, it is successful. There is success in the ministry. He says it was not in vain.

The Lord brought something wonderful out of it. And so the Lord gives us many tokens of blessing in our lives as we serve the Lord and what a thing it is. How humbling it is. Don't you feel humbled at times? When something you have done, something for the Lord you have done, you prayed about the matter and the Lord blesses it, makes it fruitful.

And even in places that you've never thought of, even in our day of technology, someone, somewhere, in some part of the world you can't even pronounce has heard something and God has blessed it, even one soul. And what a humbling experience that is. But that is a mark of the faithful ministry of the Word of God and so it is not in vain. Friends, do you feel this morning, maybe there is only one person here, and you feel so cast down and you feel what you preached on the Lord's day was not successful. It was in vain.

The Word of God assures us it is not in vain. It is not in vain. However you feel, and so the natural heart deceives, We must trust not in ourselves but in the Word of God. But then there is this characteristic of boldness that is described here. But even after that we had suffered before and were shamefully entreated as ye know at Philip Pi.

We were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention." There was, As there was success, there was opposition. There is always, that is always the case. In every faithful ministry of the Word of God, there is going to be opposition. There is the opposition against the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. The apostle speaks about the offense of the cross.

So if there is no offense of the cross, then we are not being faithful friends. And the apostle speaks about that there are many adversaries in 1 Corinthians 16 and verse 9. He was shamefully treated. Don't you feel at times shamefully treated? Things are brought up in public.

Now with, again, technology, the media, the internet, blogs, and Facebook, and such things. And we might say, it does not bother us. You might be stronger than I, but I feel it, I must confess. I do shed tears at times about those things that a brother somewhere else who does not know me, who doesn't know my circumstance, And yet they can say such things so quickly within 140 characters. In the success of the Gospel and the Word of God, there is opposition, but the minister of the Gospel must be prepared to take those shots and to be prepared that I will have scars as I enter heaven.

But the character of the minister is not one of retreat, but with courage and boldness in the gospel of Jesus Christ and not ourselves, we must continue. He says, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention. You might be hurting and you might feel that your case is unique. There is no unique case. There are no unique cases.

Isn't this what we say to our people? They come to us and they say, Pastor, my case is unique. No one else has suffered the way I have. We have also the same problem, friends. Isn't it the case we fill the ears of our brethren?

My situation is unique. There is no unique case. What do you do in those situations? Do you retreat when you are opposed, when you are hurt, when you are bleeding, when you have scars that are cut up again, the same thing again happens by different people in the same areas. What do you do?

Speak with your colleagues. We are to confess our faults to one another, the Scripture says. But how often we confess not our faults, we confess all the things that are happening to us, the bad things that are happening to us. And there's nothing wrong with that, but we must be careful. We Speak to our wives and we must thank our God for our wives who bear so much.

And we must be very careful what we say, what burdens we put upon them, how we speak to others, our friends, some of you. I don't know most of you, but I praise God for you. I'm thankful to be here. But how many of you have spoken to one another, shared things with each other? You might be very hard-pressed and discouraged this morning.

And even maybe there is one here. You've come here looking for something that holds you up and so you don't give up. I know of a minister who wrote his resignation letter recently, But thankfully he didn't post it. And how often it is the case. What do we do in such things?

There is temptation, my friends. There are temptations. When we are hurt, as the apostle Paul was, there is temptation to leave, there is temptation to give up in certain things. There's a temptation to simply carry on like a machine. Continue and as a machine produce sermons, go through the motions, and try to put things away.

And there is temptation as well to sin, sin against those people who have caused so much pain. No my friends, the apostle says no. He says after I have suffered these things you yourselves know, he says, what entrance we had amongst you. But even after that, we had suffered before and were shamefully entreated. What did we do?

Did we groan and moan and talk together and had the time to share how we have suffered. It said, no, it actually encouraged us to be bold in Jesus Christ and go forward, To be bold in our God, to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention. We didn't talk about those things that hurt us. We preached the gospel unto you, he says, in boldness. Boldness.

That Greek phrase that has the meaning of confidence, but it is the kind of confidence that brings out speech. It's utterance. It's frank in utterance, literally. Confidence in spirit and demeanor. Now think about this friends.

One of the things that we ought to think is that This boldness manifests itself in declaration of truth. It declares the truth of God in boldness. We were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God. That's the thing we were bold about, he says. The truth of Jesus Christ as it is in the Gospel.

It is too important for us to neglect. It is too important for us to try to mind those scars. People are perishing. God's people need feeding. And the day is coming to an end in our life.

A couple of years ago I was experiencing some illness and I thought I have so much to do. I have so many projects unfinished and I thought what will happen? And I feared something that might be fatal And I thought I might have six months, and I divide up that time so that I may finish before I die within six months. What things I was able to achieve. It's amazing.

When you have your death and you have given a deadline to yourself in reality, a time, by that time I might die. And it was the case. There was a possibility. But thanks be to God, the doctors were wrong. But it is the thing that concerned me that we have such a message.

These projects are of such importance because they bring out the gospel of Jesus Christ to perishing people. And I must finish my course faithful to the word of God and to the souls of men. The night cometh, the scripture says, that no man shall work." So it is the truth of the Gospel. That is the thing that emboldens us. We are not emboldened to simply talk about these things and talk about our trials.

But the trials would embolden us to be more faithful, more zealous. Is this what's happening to you? Friends, when we think about these things and think about the Apostle Paul, we think about the dangers he faced, the way he was mistreated, the things he suffered in his body, but they gave him unusual courage. This authority that he had the message of the gospel to preach and message of the word of God to preach. And so you see this fearless arousing of the anger of Festus.

He shook the conscience of the thoughtless Felix. He caused the trembling of the heart of Agrippa. We see this kind of attitude, fearlessness and boldness, in Elijah as he rebuked the sins of the wicked Ahab, when he baffled the priest of Baal into maddening frenzy. But what was Elijah's spirit then? It was unmoved.

He was confident. And we see it, of course, in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is a wonderful person. His wonderful life, an example. He denounced those leaders, those who opposed him.

He denounced all forms of sin. He condemned every wrong. He denounced those leaders as serpents and generation of vipers. And he was bald in the midst of contention, it says there, with much contention, that is amid much conflict and danger. What do you do in that situation?

My time is gone and I have not said half of the things I wanted to say. Let me conclude with this. A wonderful example I have seen, a dear brother, his name is Emon, and he has suffered much. His hands, they cannot lift and inflict the pages as we do, the pages of the Word of God. Here is a man in Iran.

He's now older. He's 27 or 28. And he was captured by the Iranian police. He was so badly treated. Why?

Because he was taking certain translations that I had done and other things and going from door to door in a busy shopping area to tell people about the Lord, tell the shopkeepers about the Lord and to give them a copy of the Gospel. And I remember speaking to him and I said to him, don't you think you need to be more wise? He said, if I do not go to them, who will go to them? Who will go to them? His friends were saying, family saying, you need to leave.

The country come to the United States. He said, if I leave, who will tell them the word of God? And then he was captured. He was in prison. He was tortured.

The police said to him, we will Do something to you that you will not be able to lift the Bible again." And they did that. One of his eyes is damaged. But do you know what he did, the first thing he did after he left the prison? He went back doing the same things. He went back doing the very same things for which he was captured.

That is the kind of boldness that the apostle Paul is talking about. It is not natural. It is supernatural. It is by the Spirit of God enabling His servants who have yielded themselves to God and think, my time is short. There's a time that my life will come to an end and I have such a message to declare.

And I must declare it. Even though I'm bleeding, I must declare it and play the man, as Latimer said to Ridley, play the man, be man, and suffer for Christ. We will not suffer more for Christ than He suffered on our behalf on the cross. And what a message we declare. What a message it is.

It is life-giving. It changes souls. It takes them from that path to destruction. It translates them to the kingdom of God's dear Son. So what we are talking about, it is not theoretical, it is not the kind of boldness that is false kind of boldness.

Edwards talks about this in his religious affections, I'll just quote that. He says, There is a false boldness for Christ that only comes from pride. A man may rashly expose himself to the world's dislike, and even deliberately provoke its displeasure, and yet do so out of pride. True boldness for Christ transcends all. It is indifferent to the displeasure of either friends or foes.

Boldness enables Christians to forsake all rather than Christ and to prefer to offend all rather than to offend Him. Gurnell says this, A minister without boldness is like a smooth file, A knife without an edge, a sentinel that is afraid to let off his gun, if men will be bold to sin, ministers must be bold to reprove." Friends, this is the kind of boldness that Reformers and martyrs are made of. May God give us such spirits and may we be humbled that there are brothers and sisters who are not living in the comforts that we do in the West, but they are somewhere unknown, unnamed to us, yet known by our Heavenly Father, and they have this thing which we crave after, and we ought to bow before the Lord and pray, Lord, give me this boldness which is Christ-like. May the Lord then speak to our hearts. Amen.

Thank you. Thank you.