A regular listener named Steve from the great city of Omaha, Nebraska asked this, Pastor

John, what does it mean to submit to and obey your leaders in Hebrews 13, 17?

Yeah, the text says, 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.

And culturally, Tony, the defining spirit of America today is the opposite of that, isn't

it?

It's self-determination, not submission to the will of another.

Anything that enhances my individual liberty to do as I please is good and anything that

encumbers me and limits my ability to do as I please is bad.

That's just the way that's the spirit we breathe in America.

And that makes this text culturally outrageous, obey your leaders and submit to them.

And we know from the side of leaders that power corrupts.

So the emphasis must always fall for leadership on servanthood, not lording it over.

Paul said, not that we lured it over your faith, but we are workers with you for your joy.

That's the kind of leaders we're supposed to submit to.

They come alongside and they work for our joy.

And the New Testament itself says leaders can go wrong.

They can go bad and disqualify themselves from being obeyed or submitted to X20, verse

30, Paul.

The speaking to the elders, and he says, from among your own selves, men will rise and

speak perverse things and draw away the disciples after them.

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