In almost every instance, powerful men of God, or, perhaps, seemingly powerful men of God in the pulpit, when they are not careful, they will engage in sexual immorality.
Sadly, because they have failed, they resume the ministry as broken cisterns that cannot hold water (see Jeremiah 2:13). They come back to the pulpit, thinking that they are whole.
Only to discover or known from the day they returned that they are broken, busted, and disqualified.
Many return to the pulpit like as if nothing ever happened. Fooling only themselves, their preaching is nothing less that a crash from garbage can tops.
Is it posible that the Lord could still use them?
Only the Lord can re-qualify the disqualified.
If God does a work to restore them the proper way, no one is exempt. The thing that is upsetting is that they return when we know that they aren’t ready. The truth of the matter is that if they were genuinely honest with themselves, they would endure the process of restoration until the hint of immorality is shunned.
The shame cannot and will never be suppressed. However, in the restorative progress, God will work His Word into us until the job is complete. This is where the heart of a pastor receives that witness from God that the guilt and shame of sin must be avoided for the rest of their lives. This is also confirmed by inescapable accountability.
Run or be evasive about the secrets in a person’s life is a dead give away that tendency to sexually sin is still there.
They return to the place of ministry because they are territorial, they are still in search of being high and lifted up in front of the people in their pre fallen glory.
To save face and still be in sin is lamented. Usually they are not broken in contrition to God in humility.
In studying the story of Samson, we see that the pattern is clear.
Consecration.
Anointing Power.
Illicit Sex.
Moral Failure.
In Judges chapter 14, we see that although Samson was used by the Lord to destroy the Philistines, common traits are exposed.
1. Some of them start out Consecrated.
To be consecrated means that they were separated unto the Lord for a specific use.
When the call of God comes upon one’s life, we all promise (emotional hype) to do the will of God until what is in us that is not consecrated in full to God emerges.
With the NT, we see that the call or Personal invitation to the ministry given by the Lord could be misconstrued as an elite status.
There’s a lot of false power and prestige that comes with being a minister of the gospel. This is very misleading because the minister of the gospel is called to be a servant, not a pope or king to be served.
To be consecrated or separated involves personal sacrifice, dedication, and a willingness to do the will of God regardless of the cost to us personally. This includes that cost to our egos.
The nation of Israel fell into sin and the Lord used the Philistines to rule over Israel for 40 years. Whenever the nation of Israel fell into sin, this was God’s chastisement to get the children to return to the Lord.
In 40 years, a lot of people could die. At the same time, the Lord would send a judge to judge the nation of Israel to get them to conform to the ways of the Lord.
Samson’s parents were without children and then the pre-incarnate Jesus appeared to the mother of Samson to instruct her about Samson’s birth and her consecration.
Samson was to be a Nazarite from the “womb until death.”
As a side note, the devil, since Genesis 3:15, has been on the lookout for the Seed that would come to destroy him. So every chance the devil got, he looked to destroy the nation of Israel. The devil correctly assumed that the Seed would come from the nation of Israel but he didn’t know who and he didn’t know when.
With the combination of destroying the man God uses or destroying the nation in sin, he believed he stood a better chance at stopping the Seed before the Seed would stop him.
In the book of Numbers chapter 6, verses 1 through 21, the Lord gave Moses the law regarding his consecration. There is no instruction about not having a wife but we see that when he gives a vow to be consecrated, he is to be “holy.”
You can’t be consecrated unto the Lord without holiness.
When you make up the rules of consecration, you can do anything you please.
When God establishes the rules of consecration, the only thing that is required is your compliance.
The purpose of consecration is very simple. You give all of yourself to the Lord for His exclusive service.
Easton’s Bible Dictionary gives an excellent read on the consecration of a Nazarite. At the conclusion of his commentary, he gave these words.
“This institution was a symbol of a life devoted to God and separated from all sin, a holy life.”
2. Some of them have unchecked or unbridled lust.
Samson failed to maintain his consecration when he asked his father and mother to get him a wife from the Philistines. The law is clear. The children of Israel are not marry foreign women.
One of the fascinating things about the Lord is that despite the instructions of the Lord, man is capable of doing things that is in violation of the known will of God. God uses this to instruct us of the importance of staying in the will of God.
When Samson’s father and mother honored their son’s request, the Lord was using this to destroy the Philistines. Rewind that back and we find that in Judges chapter 13, Israel sinned against God and placed them under the bondage of the Philistines. The price of sin is simple. Sin, and you will be placed under it’s law of bondage for a specified time as God sees fit.
From a wife, Samson went to Delilah, the harlot.
It’s the same with some of the NT believers and preachers today.
3. Some of them have pride and arrogance.
Samuel was full of pride because he knew that the power of God was upon his life. That is what gets to a lot of men and women of God in serious trouble.
We see that the Lord is working tremendous things in our lives and we deliberately cross lines.
For instance, there was a man of God, a Baptist minister, married with four children in Chicago that was involved in an unrelated investigation. It turned out that his sexual immorality was also investigated because a blackmail threat came to him. This happened in 2013. He sent salacious pictures to a woman that he wasn’t married to. She sent him salacious pictures to him and the rest was history.
The personal electronic devices, as much as it is a blessing, it is also the door to the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
When you believe that you are the one making things happen, you begin to cross lines and do unthinkable, unimaginable, and unexpected things. Behind the anointed is a demonic anointing.
Notice this Scripture in Judges 14:14-16.
“When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting against him. Then the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him; and the ropes that were on his arms became like flax that is burned with fire, and his bonds broke loose from his hands. He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand and took it, and killed a thousand men with it. Then Samson said:
“With the jawbone of a donkey,
Heaps upon heaps,
With the jawbone of a donkey
I have slain a thousand men!”
Samson failed to give God the glory.
Proverbs 8:13 says “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil; pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverse mouth I hate.”
Notice the word “fear.”
h3374. יִרְאָה iyr’â; feminine of 3373; fear (also used as infinitive); morally, reverence:— x dreadful, x exceedingly, fear (- fulness).
AV (45)- fear 41, exceedingly +h1419 2, dreadful 1, fearfulness 1;
fear, terror, fearing fear, terror awesome or terrifying thing ( object causing fear) fear ( of God), respect, reverence, piety.”
For quite some time, we had used a partial definition of the fear of God.
We’ve taught only the reverential fear of God and rightfully so. But there are other definitions that must be shared in order to get a well rounded understanding of fearing God.
We’ve excluded dread, terror, exceedingly fear.
That’s why we easily sin against the Lord. We are not afraid with terror about what God would do to us if we fail to walk in His ways.
God gives us powerful victories and then we turn around, believe that we were responsible for every victory, and then we engage in conduct that is reprehensible and offensive to Him. And then we expect God to move like this all the time.
Another thing is that Samson began to treat God like an errand boy. After killing 1000 Philistines, Samson talked to God in a very abrasive way.
Notice how Samson treats the Lord.
Judges 15:18 “Then he became very thirsty; so he cried out to the Lord and said, “You have given this great deliverance by the hand of Your servant; and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?” So God split the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out, and he drank; and his spirit returned, and he revived.”
While Samson here gives the credit for the victory, his tone reveals his heart.
I remember years ago as a young kid that I wanted water and my dad just came in from work late at night. He came into the room with the glass of water and I snatched it from him.
Looking back at it today, I remember seeing his eyes of anger. He popped me good and that reinforced the fact that he didn’t have to give me a cup of water, and that I was ungrateful.
So many of us treat God in the same way. We snatch the anointing from the Lord and it reveals that God doesn’t have to give us anything. It reveals that we are not grateful for all that the Lord does for us.
4. Some of them move from consecration to end ministry in destruction.
Because when the Lord has had enough of our childishness and disobedience, the anointing lifts and we become like mere men. Like Samson, there’s many a men and women of God that are tied to the posts without our eyes. And the whole camp of the Philistines come out to make sport of us.
The sexual immoral pastor will end the same way as with Samson.
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