Text:  1 Corinthians 9:27

Aim:   to encourage preachers to recognize, and avoid, the temptations of adultery.

Introduction:

I commend you on your commitment to Christ and to his ministry.  I have known since the age of 12 that preaching was my calling.  I’m glad I am a preacher and I hope you feel the same way.  Even though the Lord threw me a curve ball in bringing me to Harding last year, I have never wanted to be anything else than a preacher.

Ours is a serious obligation.  You and I are in the business of saving souls:  of wielding the sword of the Spirit and proclaiming the power of the gospel so as to enable the sinner to gain redemption, to escape hell, to have the hope of heaven.

We preach the good news to the lost, we plead with the backslider to repent, and we encourage the saint to continued faithfulness.  As Paul said in our text today, we become “all things to all men so that by all possible means (we) might save some.”

But this morning I want us to focus on one sinner in particular – one special target of our teaching that we should never neglect – this morning I want to make sure we seek to save ourselves.

1. SCRIPTURAL CONTEXT

1 Corinthians 9:27 – “I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, after I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.”

I would hate to go to hell from a pulpit.  There would be something eternally awful about suffering in hell while remembering your own messages that led others to escape your fate.

Here is the supreme contradiction, the ultimate irony:  a preacher bringing others to Christ, yet neglecting his own salvation and finally being rejected by the Lord. What shall it profit a preacher if he should save others, yet lose his own soul?  He saved others, yet himself he could not save!  Note: Paul was careful to listen to his own message, to apply it to himself as well as his audience.

The commentator Albert Barnes has, as usual, several sensible and sobering comments on this verse. He draws eight applications. I will read only the last five; read the entire discussion yourself.

“4. Ministers, like others, are in danger of losing their souls.

“5. The fact that a man has preached to many is no certain evidence that he will be saved.

“6. The fact that a man has been very successful in the ministry is no certain evidence that he will be saved.

“7. It will be a solemn and awful thing for a minister of the gospel, and a successful minister, to go down to hell.

“8. Ministers should be solicitous about their personal piety.”

The list of reprobate preachers in the New Testament is short but significant. If JUDAS could daily converse with the Lord;  if he could witness the miracles, hear the teachings, and even be sent out by Jesus on preaching missions;  and yet ultimately betray Christ, should not we today take warning?  If DEMAS could twice be listed by the apostle as a companion and fellow-laborer (Col 4:14, Phile 24) and then later desert Paul to go back into the world (2 Tm 4:10), should not we take note?

The fact is, there is no position, office, or level of service in the kingdom of God from which we cannot turn back.  Elders, deacons, Christian college professors, preachers, and missionaries all can and have left the faith.

I’m not suggesting that anyone in this room today is in imminent danger.  I have no reason to believe that is true, and every reason to hope that it isn’t.  But if so illustrious a preacher as the apostle Paul considered it a possibility to be avoided, I think each of us would be wise to take it to heart.

We preachers need occasionally to be on the receiving end of preaching!  Why do I say that?

After our text in 1 Corinthians 9, Paul follows in Chapter 10 with the sobering example of the disobedient Israelites in the desert (who were all destroyed save for two – Joshua and Caleb) and then gives the exhortation  in Verse 12 – “let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” The quickest way to fall for temptation is to forget you are capable of being tempted!  When is the last time you were genuinely convicted by one of your own sermons? You preach good sermons – are you listening to them yourselves?

Now let me focus our lens even more narrowly, and concentrate on one specific temptation that I have been assigned to address this morning:  ADULTERY.

I don’t have any statistics to show that preachers as a class are more prone to this temptation –

but I do have ample evidence that they are not immune. In every region of the nation where I have served, I have become aware of some preaching colleague who lost his ministry, and sometimes his marriage, because of infidelity. And I have learned that the ministry has a unique set of five inter-related conditions which make this particular sin a possibility of which we should be aware  (see 1 Tm 5:1-2, 2 Tm 3:6).

1. ACCESSIBILITY: Few professions have as much flexibility in time as does the ministry, and many doors are opened to a preacher that might be closed to others.

2. IMAGE: That is, the image of the preacher as warm, empathetic, caring counselor. Ministers may find themselves working with women who are in sour or “dead” marriages.  When that woman (with a cold, unresponsive husband) suddenly finds herself interacting with a warm, sympathetic man, she may become emotionally involved with the minister before he is aware of it. Mary Bouma did a study entitled Divorce in the Parsonage (Bethany Fellowship, 1979) in which she found that when ministers had affairs, it was usually with a counselee (p. 50).
   

3. FAMILY NEGLECT: The stresses of ministry sometimes, unfortunately, show up in our relationship with our families, and with our mate, and this breakdown makes temptation even more of a problem.

4. IGNORANCE:  When the crowd in Lystra tried to worship Paul and Barnabas, the two missionaries insisted  “we are only men, human like you “ (Acts 14:15).  That is a statement we need to take to heart!  We work for God – but we’re not God!

In his book Finishing Strong, author Steve Farrar tells of a study conducted by Dr. Howard Hendricks of 246 men in full-time ministry:

“The thing they had in common was that within twenty-four months of each other they became involved in an immoral extramarital relationship.

After interviewing each man, Dr. Hendricks discovered four correlations between all 246 men:

1. None were involved in any kind of personal group.
2. Each had ceased to invest in a daily personal time of prayer, Scripture reading, and worship.
3. Over 80 percent of the adultery began with a counseling relationship.
4. Without exception, each of the 246 had been convinced that moral failure ‘will never happen to me.’“

Steve Farrar, Finishing Strong, (Multnomah, 1995); submitted by Van Morris, Mount Washington, Kentucky

Apply the same advice in our own life that we would give to others and don’t let temptation and weakness collide with opportunity.  Preachers are not “immune” from temptations, yet they may miss the warning signs and thus inadvertently set themselves up in compromising situations without realizing it.  (More on that in a moment.)

5. ATTRACTION: I am aware that nearly all of us preachers are much more handsome that the average man, but I am talking here about psychological attraction.  Several researchers who have studied the problem of ministers who become involved with affairs conclude that preachers, because of their “safe” image, may actually be more attractive to women with certain types of emotional problems (see John Dart, “Affairs:  Clergymen Struggle with Opportunities – and Failings,” Los Angeles Times Saturday, May 10, 1981, Part II, p 14-15).  I realize that some preachers are predators – but others are naïve.  Listen carefully to these two verses:

2 Peter 2:14   “With eyes full of adultery, they never stop sinning; they seduce the UNSTABLE; they are experts in greed—an accursed brood!” 

2 Timothy 3:6  “They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over WEAK-WILLED women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires…..”

I am convinced that some preachers ended up in the trap of infidelity because they were unaware of the nature of unhealthy psychological dynamics.  Simply put, some individuals are “unstable” and “weak-willed”:  that is, they have emotional problems that cause them to have a weak sense of moral boundaries.  They have great difficulty in separating any sort of healthy emotional closeness or caring from sexual attraction.  As a result, if any man comes along who shows them warmth, empathy, or affection, they will make themselves sexually available to him.

I know that over the years there have been women with whom I could have become sexually intimate, if I had pursued that path.  But hey, I’m smart enough to realize it was not because I’m such a handsome stud – it was because those women were emotionally unstable, and if I had become involved with them it would have been a toxic entanglement.

Young lady in community clinic: suicidal after the breakup of another tempestuous relationship:  Her very first words in the opening session were:  “I’ve never had a close relationship with a man that didn’t begin with sex.”  If you’re a counselor, how do you respond to that?  I replied, “Congratulations!  You’ve just started your first.  Because I care for you too much to sleep with you.” 

CONCLUSIONS:

1. Prioritize your relationship with your mate. The Biblical prescription for preventing adultery is still a healthy home life (cf Prov 5:15-20, 1 Cor 7:2-5).  Be especially careful of unresolved RESENTMENTS toward your mate, because they have the capacity to “set you up” for temptation.  Remember this equation:  RESENTMENT leads to RATIONALIZATION leads to RENDEZVOUS!
   

2. Closely monitor your relationships with the opposite sex. There is a reason why Paul tells the young man Timothy to “treat younger women as sisters, with absolute purity” (1 Timothy 5:2).  Know the warning signs and maintain proper boundaries:

• Never, ever counsel someone of the opposite sex by yourself (I always had a secretary on the other side of the door when I was in a session).

• Never, ever travel alone with someone of the opposite sex – even if it is to a church conference. [Note the Boy Scouts “two-deep” policy.] This not only prevents opportunity for temptations, but it also safeguards you from unfounded accusations.

• Beware of counseling married women for extended periods of time without their husbands present – from a counseling perspective, that is unwise for all sorts of reasons! When a therapist allows this to happen, he/she is (at the least) creating an unhealthy alliance.  When a minister allows this to happen, it may be because he is enjoying her company.

• If you find yourself looking forward/eagerly anticipating a counseling session or Bible study with a particular member of the opposite sex, and on the morning of the day you are scheduled to see her you even add an extra splash of Old Spice, you’re already on the slippery slope.

• And the reddest flag of all: the minute you engage in any phone conversation, any email or text, any personal comment with a member of the opposite sex that you wouldn’t want your mate to know about – you have already crossed over the line of unfaithfulness.
  

3. Don’t forget your own relationship with God. Have you ever noticed that leaders in the church are always directed to their own lives first?!  [cf. stewardess’ preflight instructions:  “If oxygen masks deploy, place your own mask on first before attending to your children.”]

Acts 20:28 – “take heed unto yourselves, and to all the flock …” 

1 Timothy 4:16 – “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers”

Don’t ever take your own salvation for granted – Paul didn’t!  “I beat my body, and make it my slave” – that is, he was careful to practice Christian disciplines. Three questions:

1. Do you maintain a disciplined schedule of devotional time to commune with God through prayer and Bible study? Even Jesus needed to withdraw to a “lonely place,” and that frequently!

2. Do you take advantage of opportunities for spiritual growth, for fresh challenges? Do you utilize lectureship, seminars, workshops, extra schooling, or trips to other ministries? We all get stale, and need to stretch ourselves, and recharge ourselves, lest we burn out! Even the best of blades will get dull every now and then!

3. Do you have an accountability partner, some trusted colleague to whom you can confess your vulnerabilities to pornography, adultery, to any kind of temptation? Our willingness to be authentic and open to another brother who can pray for us and hold us accountable is one of the strongest signs that we are serious about maintaining our integrity AND one of the best ways to avoid infidelity!

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:27 – “I beat my body and make it my slave so that AFTER I HAVE PREACHED TO OTHERS, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.” 

I would hate to go to hell from a pulpit.  Actually, now that I think about it, I wouldn’t want to arrive there from anywhere!  But I do want us to be aware of the fact that because of our prolonged, “professional” exposure to the gospel it might become routine, mechanical, or irrelevant to our own life. We should be always remember that “after we preach to others” – we need God’s grace ourselves!

Dan Williams