Hebrews 13:17 - Lay Duties: Obedience

Hebrews 13:17 - Obey your leaders, and submit to them; for they keep watch over your souls, as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for they would be unprofitable for you. 

Message: Lay Duties: Obedience

Time: Hebrews was written to a group of Christians who had suffered in the past and were now threatened with even more suffering. They'd done well years ago, but the author of Hebrews feared that they might now turn away from Christ to avoid further persecution. The opinions on the author of Hebrews has varied.

What the Lord is Saying: After a quick read of chapter 13, it reads like a summary of encouragement to people that they need to remember to do: show hospitality to strangers (v.2), remember prisoners (v. 3), hold marriage in high view (v. 4), be free from the love of money (v. 5), imitate those who led you (v. 7), do not be carried away by strange teachings (v.9), through Jesus, continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God (v.15), don't neglect doing good (v. 16), and finally obey your leaders (v. 17). 

In verse 7 are the words Remember those who led you...imitate and now here is versus 17 is more - obey your leaders, and submit. The leaders are they who keep watch over your souls. The idea here is not simply to listen, but be ready to comply with their wishes and requests. And as we submit something happens to our leaders. It says that have joy and not grief. The greatest joy and encouragement we can give to our leaders is by doing what they ask. Boy, this is hard. It takes me out of my comfort zone because I only want to do what is comfortable. 

I admit a struggle with this at times and I think in the Church we are often quick in these latter days to offer our opinions on whether we should submit or not. Even in the reading today from Tabletalk, most of the lesson speaks of how we need to only be submitting to leaders that are preaching the word of God correctly and we have no obligation over those who do not do this. For me, this speaks to our times and the constant commentary we have on life. We would rather talk about people than be obedient to them. 

It reminds me of Proverbs 16:27 -- "A worthless man digs up evil while his words are a scorching fire." The Living Bible translates this as "Idle hands are the devil’s workshop; idle lips are his mouthpiece." Perhaps this is a different lesson, but we are too quick to disagree. It seems in our idleness we are quicker to grumble and complain. The idea in this verse is we dig up evil. We look too hard for something that may not clearly be there. 

But the encouragement from all of these verses in Hebrews including verse 7 and 17 is to remember to do these things. I even catch myself doing this. I received an email this past week stating that we need to do a good job as men to serve the women in our church by helping with oil changes. And my first thought is maybe God has something else for me to do. Rather than responding to the call, I wonder if I could do something else. Again, why is my first thought not to jump at it? But rather to wonder if I should. 

Summary: Submit to God-honoring leaders in a way that makes them glad to their jobs. 

Promise: It is easy to gripe and complain about our church leaders, but it is much harder to submit to them as God calls us to do. 

Prayer: O Lord, help me to be one that obeys first rather than does commentary first. Help me to be a person of obedience to my leaders, not simply when I agree with them and their stances. Help me to not grumble. Lord, keep encouraging me in these words to go the extra mile.