Watchmen for Our Protection
October 9, 2022
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
Hebrews 13:17
17 Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.
We’re in a series on the local church. Drawing from the words of Jesus in Matthew 16 we’re titling the series “I Will Build My Church,” and giving the series the subtitle “God’s Antidote for an Anxious and Apathetic Age.” Which is to say the church is not insignificant. Which is to say, whether we realize it or not, the church is significant.
We began preaching about the whole sweep of salvation, the way God saves sinners and redeems all of creation. We’ve preached about the head of the church: Jesus Christ. We’ve preached generally about the people of the church: chosen, treasured, changed people. Now, we’re going to do something of a mini-series within the big series: pastors this week, deacons next week, and church members in two weeks. Or as we titled the sermons: pastors as “Watchmen for Our Protection,” deacons as “Help for Our Vulnerability,” and church membership as “A Community for Our Growth.”
Our passage this morning is just one verse, Hebrews 13:17, and in it the leaders are described as men who watch over the souls of those under their care. Thus your pastors aim to prepare you, week in and week out, to live well and die well. Again, your pastors aim to prepare you, week in and week out, to live well and die well. Or to say it another way: pastors exist to help the weak, wounded, and wayward enjoy the living Jesus. Let’s begin in prayer as we study this verse. “Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
I’ve been in Harrisburg as one of your pastors for about nine years. I have a very distinct memory from when we first moved. I was on a bike riding up and over Blue Mountain Parkway. Blue Mountain is the ridge just north of here, just north of Linglestown. Riding over that hill requires a lot of effort, which is why I enjoy it. I’m strange like that.
And this particular time I’m on the backside of the hill coming toward Harrisburg, toward Harrisburg Christ School—if you know the road—and I’m maybe less than a tenth of a mile from the top when I get a flat tire. I pull over, flip my bike, get out my tools from the saddle bag, and go to work replacing the inner tube. When changing a tire goes well, it takes five minutes. When it goes badly, it takes fifteen minutes. When it goes really badly, I call for a ride home.
It was going sort of okay when a small white car comes over the hill going very slowly. The car approaches me, and I get this sense they want to tell me something, perhaps make sure I’m doing okay and offer some warm, friendly Pennsylvania hospitality. The woman in the passenger seat yells to me, “Did you see that bear?” I shake my head. “Really?” she asks. “It was just right there, like shaking the trees and everything. It’s huge,” she says. “Oh,” I say. Then the driver leans forward and says, “Yeah, so huge,” as his car continues to coast by. Then the woman yells, “Good luck,” and as they speed away, I sit there in a tiny helmet, hoping bears don’t like the taste of spandex. Welcome to Pennsylvania, I think.
I never did see that bear, but it was disconcerting to me that someone else saw a bear, saw real danger, and did nothing to help. Well, did almost nothing. They could have said, Do you want us to sit here while you finish? Do you want a ride to the bottom of the hill, you know, away from danger? They had options. They chose to keep driving.
We feel that story as both funny and wrong because we sense that even though they had no formal obligation to help, to “watch out for me” if you will, they had some sort of moral obligation to watch out for a fellow human being.
And we do read in God’s Scriptures that there are those who God appoints to have a formal obligation, to say nothing of the moral one, to care for and watch out for others. They go by various names. Generally, they’re called leaders or watchmen, as in this passage. Or perhaps pastor or elders or overseers. We tend to put the words pastor and elder together with a hyphen because we think the Bible uses those words to refer to the same thing even though in culture we use them differently. So, we believe those elders who make decisions and lead a church are also those who care for and pastor, which is why we keep them together.
Anyway, another name for leaders is shepherds. Earlier in the service, as we had our time of confession and our assurance of pardon, we heard parts of Ezekiel 34 read. The passage is infamous for the way the shepherds, the watchman, the leaders and elders of Israel had become so dysfunctional that God was going to put them under judgement. In short, rather than shepherds caring for the tender flock under their care, they ate mutton from breakfast, lunch, and dinner. God promised that he would become their good shepherd. He did this in the person of Jesus, who calls himself the Good Shepherd. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy,” Jesus said in John 10:10–11. “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
So, in the book of Ezekiel 34, out of the overflow of God’s loving watch care for his people, God promises that he himself will become the Good Shepherd. But that’s not all God has to say about the matter.
The prophet Jeremiah was roughly a contemporary of Ezekiel, prophesying from different geographic locations but with similar emphasis. Listen to what God says in Jeremiah in 3:15. “I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.” Notice this promise is plural: shepherds. Again, “I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.”
God’s loving watch care for his people leads him to send the one, Good Shepherd Jesus Christ, who the apostle Peter calls the Chief shepherd (1 Peter 5). But God also promises to give many good shepherds, or under-shepherds, who watch over his flock.
With all this in mind, we come back to our one verse from Hebrews 13:17.
Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.
This verse speaks to both leaders and congregations. Typically, as we preach a passage, we come with an outline of sorts to give us some handholds on the passage. This morning, I’m going to just take the four phrases in the passage, one phrase at a time, and do my best to explain the good God designs for his church in each phrase.
Your leaders . . . to them
I know the first word is “obey” and then “submit,” but let’s start with the phrase “your leaders” and “to them.”
I have a pastor friend who wrote an article that was published a few years ago on a major Christian website. The title of the article is, “Why I’m a Better Pastor for You Than Keller or Piper.” That’s Timothy Keller and John Piper, probably two of the most famous conservative pastors in the world, with each having forty years of ministry, if not fifty, and probably nearly a hundred books between them with millions of total sales. And my friend wrote an article that says, he’s a better pastor for you. And—get this—when John Piper saw the post on social media, he reshared the post and said, “Just so you know, Tim and I think this is absolutely right . . .” Really?
The whole point of the article was that, because my friend was one of the local pastors of his people—a local watchman—he was a better pastor for them than a big famous pastor who would never know the name of those sheep.
The author of Hebrews writes, “your leaders” and “to them.” The assumption is that if you are a Christian, you can point to people you know and who know you and you can say, “These are my leaders,” and they can say, “He’s one of my sheep.” You can have favorite authors and podcasts and leaders and talking heads, but they are not your leaders, not in the sense of Hebrews 13 or the broader sense of the New Testament. John Piper and Timothy Keller and John MacArthur and Jen Wilkin and whomever are not your leaders. They don’t know you. And you don’t know them—probably. Not to mention that it’s leaders in the plural, not the singular, which is always how it is in the New Testament, a plurality of leaders, a plurality of watchmen.
So, I’ll ask this: Can you be in obedience to God if you, as a pattern, only casually and anonymously attend various churches? No, you can’t. Now, if you’re visiting this morning or if you’ve been here less than a year, I’m not talking to you. We’d glad you’re here. It takes time to choose the right church. You need time to experience who the people are and who the leaders are. But when the time is right, church membership tries to take seriously the formal declaration that identifies both shepherds and sheep. Church membership establishes both accountability and protection. Let’s keep going.
Obey and submit…
Now we come back to the words “obey and submit.” The Bible says you should obey your leaders and submit to them, except for when you shouldn’t obey your leaders and shouldn’t submit to them. Do you know what I mean? Obey leaders except for when you shouldn’t. Submit to leaders except for when you shouldn’t. I’ll explain.
We probably feel in a cultural moment uniquely hard to preach this. Americans tend to be individualistic and anti-authoritarian. So there’s that. And we’ve all seen a rash of national religious leaders launched high into the sky and then explode with flames and shrapnel flying all over the place. That’s at the national level. And many of you have seen church leaders flame out at the local, personal level. So, again, we might feel in a cultural moment where it’s uniquely hard to preach this. But I don’t think that’s true.
Here’s a quote from John Owen. Owen was a pastor in the 1600s. He’s most famous, if he is at all famous to you, for his book on temptation called The Mortification of Sin, which means the killing of sin. The book has the famous line, “Be killing sin or sin will be killing you.” I have a coffee cup with a picture of a skull on it and that quote. The church bought it for me one Christmas. I’m sure Owen would approve.
In Owen’s commentary on Hebrews on this verse, he writes,
“Those who rule are those who guide, feed, or lead you with authority . . . . It is with respect unto their teaching, preaching, or pastoral feeding, that they are commanded to obey them . . . . It is not a blind, implicit obedience and subjection that is here prescribed. . . . If those who suppose themselves to be in offices as guides of others do teach . . . things that belong not unto their office, there is no obedience due unto them by virtue of this command.”
In other words, obey your leaders except for when you shouldn’t. Don’t follow them off a theological cliff. Don’t submit to leaders as they lead you into sin. Owen writes this after over a thousand years of leadership of the church held almost exclusively by the Roman Catholic church, which in the last few hundred years before Owen wrote consisted of especially dysfunctional leadership. Owen knew something of bad church leaders. So, our time is not unique.
If you even go back to the New Testament itself, there are plenty of commands to avoid wolves masquerading as faithful pastors. Paul uses those exact words in the book of Acts to warn church leaders (Acts 20; cf. Gal. 1). We have the #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements, but listen to Jesus talk about the religious leaders of his day:
Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation. (Luke 20:46–47, emphasis added)
I’m not sure if “devour widows” had a sexual meaning or if it more of a monetary one. But the idea is that of leaders using their power to overpower the powerless, which is, of course, evil.
So we come back again to our moment and have to realize we’re not unique. In the words of the author of Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun (1:9). In fact, we see this tension between “obeyand not-obey” right in the passage of Hebrews 13. Look in v. 7. We’re told to remember our leaders. But then look at v. 9. “Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings . . .” So, obey leaders except for when you shouldn’t.
Let me try to say this as carefully as I can, because I know many of you have been hurt by church leaders. It’s funny timing, really, because I think between the formal and informal meetings I had over the last week, I must have heard from a half dozen people severely hurt by a church. So what does this verse say to us? At the level of the heart, these verses are saying that when you have leaders watching over you for your good, your heart posture should be, as much as it is possible and prudent, that of trust. You should try to work toward the place where your default posture is wanting to go along with leaders. That’s what we’re commanded in this verse. I’ll say it again. At the level of the heart, this verse is saying that when you have leaders watching over you for your good, your heart posture should be, as much as it is possible and prudent, that of trust.
I’ll put it like this. When I have my articles and books edited by gifted editors, I try to have my heart posture inclined to trust the editor, that she’s seeing something I might not see, such that my default answer to suggestions, that her putting red ink all over my words, is “Yes, that is probably better.” Again, in the words of Owen, “It is not a blind, implicit obedience and subjection that is here prescribed.”
When I first began working at my former church, I was younger than I am now, which of course was the case, right? But I was a rookie pastor who wanted to love his sheep and wanted to serve but had little experience doing that well, though I tried, quiet imperfectly at times. At our church there was a guy named Glenn. He had been walking with the Lord longer than I had been alive. I remember talking with him about baptizing his son and talking with Glenn about faith. Glenn knew the Lord well. Yet he always treated me, even though I was young, with such respect. It made me realize that there are those who give respect because someone deserves respect. That’s not a bad thing. It’s probably appropriate most of the time. And there are also those who give respect because the office or role of a person deserves respect, and therefore respect should be given. What this passage is encouraging is a community of respect for leaders and support back from leaders, of following leaders and protection given by leaders.
There’s so much more we could say about when we need protection from our leaders, and I’ve tried to provide some thoughts, but I’ll have to keep moving forward for now.
For they are keeping watch…
Look at the next phrase. I’ll read it to you again. “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.”
The author does tell the church to submit to their leaders, but leaders are reminded they submit to God. Leaders will give an account to God for how they lead God’s people. No shepherd who has ever eaten sheep will get away with it, either in this life or the life to come. It won’t happen. Leaders will give an account to God for how they lead.
I’ll put it like this. If there were a problem in a church that Jesus was going to address, he’d come knock on the door and ask to speak with the pastor-elders. As I heard one pastor recently put it, “First and foremost [elders] are not men with authority but men under authority” (Mike Bullmore, “Leaders,” Crossway Church, March 13, 2022).
And consider the phrase keep watch over your souls. The phrase communicates a serious responsibility. It tells us that as we consider which church to belong to, we should choose not merely because a church has a snappy worship team or the best coffee or fun youth programs. We should be choosing our churches and our leaders based on the quality of the men who installed to keep watch over our souls. This is first and foremost.
Let them do this with joy…
But notice the last line in the passage. Just because something is a serious matter does not mean it is not a joyful matter. The last line says, “Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.”
It’s not wrong for you to want joyful pastors, as opposed to crabby pastors, over you. In fact, this passage is saying you should want pastors to be joyful because it actually helps you. Think about it. An engineer might be able to design a widget without joy and your ability to use that widget won’t necessarily be diminished if the engineer is not joyful. You can have unhappy engineers because happiness isn’t necessarily integral to the product they are producing.
But pastors have the calling to know God and walk with God and commend God to others. “Hey, have you considered Jesus; he’s wonderful.” How can we do that if we hate pastoring, hate walking with God, hate knowing Jesus. How can we commend to you eternal joy if we are not, in some ways, also joyful? We can’t. You can do it either.
Consider going to the doctor when you have health concerns. You get back to the little room, the nurse has taken your blood pressure, and you wait. It’s like 8:35 in the morning. Eventually the doctor staggers into the room, looking like he hasn’t slept for days. The doctor is like fifty pounds overweight, and hasn’t shaved in a week, and when he sits down in the room, he starts smoking a cigarette and cracks open a fresh can of beer. Are you encouraged that your health concerns are in good hands with this doctor? Is this the person to whom you want to bring your most serious health questions? No!
And you wouldn’t want to take spiritual advice about how to have eternal happiness with God from a man who seems to know nothing of this happiness in this life.
Now, ministry—especially Christian leadership within ministry—can be really, really hard. The world is a really broken place. And leaders see more of the brokenness, for sure. But still, good pastors realize how wonderful of a job they have. Pastors get to watch over people so that they become more and more and more joyful in Jesus. What kind of a wonderful job is that! In fact, when Paul lists the character requirements for being a pastor, the first thing he says is that the person who desires to be an overseer desires a noble task (1 Tim. 3:1).
Which, if you give me just one minute before I close, let me just put in a word to some of you. Church, cultivate a vision for the nobleness and joyfulness of serving in church leadership. The world will give you many visions of what it looks like to be a success, visions of what it means for your life to count. Some of them will be true, and some will be lies. But among all the true visions for a successful life, I want to cast a vision for you to train now to one day become a godly leader in a local church. It may feel like a lot of work, and it may feel like an insignificant calling, but over the long haul it will bear fruit and it will be joyful. Because when leaders do their job well—when they show up to serve, show up to lead—lives get changed for the better. Family trees get changed. One generation proclaims God’s goodness to another generation. Dream of that. Pray about that. Long for that. Have a vision that after you have been poured into by church leadership for ten, twenty, maybe forty years, that a crowning achievement of your life might be the season God then gives you to have the privilege of watching over souls.
Conclusion
As we close, I’ll tell you about two of my heroes of pastoral ministry. You’d never guess the first, though you should guess the second. One of my pastoral heroes was not actually a pastor, but he did model what it means to work with people for their joy. For many years there was a show on TV called The Biggest Loser, a show where contestants competed to lose weight. For contestants, because they were so unhealthy, weight loss was not so much about looking good in a swimsuit but rather about not dying. For most contestants, weight loss was about seeing their children grow up and get married.
One of the trainers was named Bob. I’m not sure how “real” the reality show was, but I did love watching him on that show. At various times in the show, the people he trained hated him—often in the final workout before weigh-in they’d be so frustrated because Bob would push the contestants harder than they thought they could be or should be pushed. But for those who followed their leaders, they would stand on the scale, and the numbers would flash on the screen of how many pounds they lost. And it would be a big number. And the contestant would raise her arms in euphoria! Then she’d start to make this silent nob and point to their trainer who was watching on with joy. And she’d mouth “Thank you.”
Admittedly it’s strange for Bob to be a pastor hero when he wasn’t a pastor. But I see in him a picture of what the author of Hebrews wants for us. He wants leaders to work with them for their eternal joy. Bob trained people for the day that mattered, and I want to pastor for the day that matters. A good leader knows there will be desires for junk food—lust, gossip, cynicism, anxiety, and the like. He knows there’ll be temptations toward apathy. But good leaders also know the true church has deeper desires for the eternal joy and satisfaction of knowing Jesus. And he leads his people accordingly.
My second hero you should guess. His name is Jesus. He’s the most joyful pastor there has ever been and will ever be. The author of Hebrews felt this way too. Look how he describes Jesus at the start of chapter 12.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb. 12:1–2)
It was not for the duty that was set before him that Jesus endured the cross. It was merely not for the importance of salvation that Jesus endured the cross to you. It was not merely that it was a good thing for us that Jesus took all our sins upon himself. What does the author of Hebrews say? “Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Jesus is the most happy pastor and joyful church leader you’ll ever know. In the first chapter of Hebrews, the author says that Jesus has been anointed with the oil of gladness beyond any of his companions (1:9). And if you don’t know Jesus as a joyful pastor of your soul, you can. Jesus would love to be for you what this passage says, to be the leader who watches out for your soul, to be the one who makes you joyful in God in this life and the life to come.
This week we talked about watchmen who care for our souls. Next week we’ll talk about those in the church who care for our physical vulnerability, we call them deacons and deaconesses. Let’s pray . . .
