Exposed: The Compromised Priesthood
You don’t lose the Presence of God overnight.
It is usually a long process of consistent disobedience to Yahweh’s plan.
So it was in the days of ancient Israel. Following the days of Joshua’s great conquest, with Israel firmly planted in their promised land, they were in a constant cycle of idolatry, adversaries, repentance, and deliverance.
Israel was living in a time much like our nation today when “everyone did what seemed right to them” (Judges 21:25 VOICE). Yet, in the book of 1 Samuel, we find that it wasn’t just the people who were doing what they thought was right—they were being led by a compromised priesthood who did whatever they wanted.
This compromised priesthood consisted of a father, Eli, and his two corrupt sons, Hophni and Phinehas. Eli served for 40 years as a judge for Israel and a priest in Shiloh. He was fat, nearly blind, and while he enjoyed the position he had, he could not discern the desperation and birthing of a new thing in Israel. The Bible speaks clearly to the failings of Eli as a father, naming his sons “worthless men” (1 Sam. 2:12 ESV). It was Eli who, through failing as a father, began this cycle of destructive leadership in Israel by not correcting his sons and cleaning out the house of the Lord.
The sons of Eli were considered morally corrupt and worthless men. They did not know the Lord and didn’t walk in the lifestyle expected of a priest. They oozed with the sin of ambition and greed. They made up their own rules in a time when their priestly duties were laid out plainly. If that wasn’t enough, these men operated in sexual perversion, sleeping with the women who served at the entrance of the tent of meeting, leading the nation into perversion and greed.
Today we see the spirits of Hophni and Phinehas alive in this compromised priesthood that has infiltrated the Western church through the guise of gifts and talents, titles, and positions. We have all read the stories of senior pastors sleeping with students in their youth ministries, church leaders committing adultery with their assistants, and charismatic celebrity church leaders sleeping with their “fans” and offering them the morning-after pill. Where is the fear of the Lord?
Unfortunately, it’s easy to find the root of this rebellion. After decades of scandals, especially among the Pentecostal/Charismatic world, we have become numb to the almost daily stories of ministers being exposed in compromised choices and lifestyles. We have allowed men to take positions without the fruit of devotion to Jesus.
Because we have dishonored the gift of the apostle in our day, we are dealing with a fatherless epidemic among church leaders. The fear of the Lord has been replaced with greed and ambition. Because we lost the love of His Presence, we lost our ultimate source of contentment and began to pursue money instead of Him.
Hebrews 13:5 warns us, “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you’” (NIV). Our greatest inheritance is not the wealth received. The Presence of the One who promised to never forsake us stands with us to provide for our each and every step of the way.
Because we have so few fathers in the American church, many church leaders have become a law unto themselves. They never learned the experiential knowledge of God gained in intimacy, understood the fear of the Lord, or learned to live vulnerably or allow someone to hold them accountable to the standards of New Testament leadership.
Today, we see both men and women in church leadership oozing with ambition who have traded their intimacy with God for business strategies. We have lost the knowledge of God for a complete indoctrination of Babylon. Church leadership was expected to carry on orthodoxy, study theology, and know God intimately. Today you are more likely to find their libraries full of business and marketing books to leverage their influence and gain self-help productivity hacks.
The Kingdom of God’s idea of significance was traded for Babylon’s idea of success. When that happened, we lost the fear of the Lord, and people became nothing more than numbers and tithe checks.
The compromised priesthood says, “How can we leverage our position and titles for personal gain or sexual pleasure?” Again, this didn’t happen overnight. It started with unsubmitted leaders functioning in small acts of compromise over an extended period of time.
Entertainment standards have caused us to value positions, titles, gifts, and talents more than inspecting the fruit of a leader’s character. As long as church leaders played their role on the platform and put on a good show for us once a week, we ignored their compromise.
Yet, if Eli had truly confronted his sons’ sins as a father, this vicious cycle of destructive leadership and subsequent loss of the Presence of God could have been thwarted. God spoke to Eli saying, “You have honored your sons more than me, by making yourselves fat with the best part of all of the offerings of my people Israel” (1 Samuel 2:29 CSB).
The Presence of God was lost in a nation. Not primarily because of the sons’ sins, but the unwillingness of a father to confront and correct his sons. Sadly, we know that Eli did not fully deal with his sons because he benefited from their compromise.
Eli not only grew fat from their greed, but God also said that he honored his sons more than Him. Maybe we don’t realize it, but the compromised priesthood honors what we helped create more than we honor Yahweh.
We must be careful not to create, build, or value something above the ways of God especially when Yahweh is asking for us to make Him the center of it all!
How often do we see the Presence of God being shoved out of the room so that our vision can be displayed? Today’s act of adultery among the priesthood is far greater than Hophni and Phinehas because we ask the Bride of Christ to take their gaze off of the Groom and onto ourselves.
Pastors who once led the flock are now leading their groupies, fans, and partners to worship their gift instead of the Presence of the One who called us. We see “kingdoms” being built in the name of personalities, not realizing the Presence of God is no longer being honored in His own house.
We need fathers today to warn their sons, as the apostle Paul did to his spiritual son Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:9, that “those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction” (ESV). He continues by saying, “Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs” (1 Timothy 6:10 NIV).
Please listen. Money, buildings, and good causes are not the real issue. The primary pursuit of it distracts and eventually leads to the absence of devotion to Jesus. Leaders now treat ministry like business contracts. They don’t pray about where they should be, but they look for the more advantageous opportunity for personal gain.
Young men leave seminary prepared to start an enterprise and are ill-equipped theologically for the ministry. Pastors are spending more time recruiting and fleecing their flocks with the latest multi-level marketing schemes instead of teaching them that God gives us the power to create wealth (see Deuteronomy 8:18). Offerings are more about the vision of the church than true honor for the Lord.
For years we have blamed the nation’s condition on sinners, yet how will a city or country know how to live if they have no example? Maybe we should put down our rocks of religion that we aim at the world and realize it is always the compromise of the priesthood that leads to the perversion of a nation.
Nations are no different today. As the body of Christ, we are now the ambassadors who are to represent the Kingdom of God to the world. We are to be image-bearers, kings, and priests unto God, carriers of His Presence standing before a culture desperate for His Presence, true identity, and purpose. If we fail to acknowledge His Presence, we lose our most valuable possession that makes cultural transformation possible.
This is how Israel lost His Presence. When Israel needed Yahweh the most, the compromised priesthood led the people into a battle they could not win without His Presence being the priority. What was the cost in their day? Thirty thousand men, the elimination of the priesthood, and their most prized possession, the Ark of His Presence, in the hands of their enemies.
