God's Design for Church Leadership, Part 2 (Hebrews 13:17-19)

Hebrews chapter 13. And before we begin, let's open with a word of prayer. Father, we delight in Your Word. We delight in its clarity, its precision, its depth. We delight in its power to change our hearts and our minds, to sanctify us and conform us to the image of Christ.

We thank You that in Your Word You have given to us everything that is necessary for life and for godliness, for the ministry of Your church, for the oversight of our souls, for our conforming to the image of Christ, for our daily walk.

We are blessed, we are a blessed people to enjoy Your Word, to have it in our own language, in our own hands, and to be able to benefit from time spent studying and reading and hearing Your Word preached.

And so we pray now that Your Spirit would work through Your Word to conform us to the image of Christ, to humble our hearts, to sanctify us and make us a holy people. And we pray that You would strengthen us by Your Word according to Your good grace and the power of Your Spirit this morning.

We ask these things in Christ's name. Amen. Well, today is the continuation of last week's message on biblical leadership, church leadership, and our responsibility to those leaders. We are in chapter 13, verse 17, and I'll just read that verse to us here again as we begin.

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 this would be unprofitable for you. And providentially, we have the opportunity as a church to recognize somebody as a new elder that we're adding to the eldership of this church, and we were able to arrange it so that it would providentially work out to do that in conjunction with this passage.

And so we're spending two weeks on Hebrews 13, 17, and we're going to do that at the end of the message today. And I mentioned last week how awkward it is to preach on this subject for me, and I've been dreading this since the beginning of Hebrews, and all of that is true.

And you might be wondering, well, it seems like spending two weeks on a verse you weren't looking forward to preaching would be an odd way to show that you really weren't looking forward to that at all.

And that is true, but last week we needed to lay a bit of a foundation for this subject of church leadership and the issue of what Scripture teaches concerning leaders and their function, their structure, and the authority that they are given.

And the New Testament gives some very clear teaching regarding leadership in the church concerning elders and deacons, and last week we kind of went through a lot of stuff in a very summary fashion, something that could have taken four or five weeks to go through, but we didn't do that, mostly or partly, I should say, because we cover this in our membership class, but also because I think that it just would...I didn't want to get bogged down in the details.

So we kind of flew at 30 ,000 feet last week. We're going to get into the details of this verse a little bit more today. I want to give you briefly what we covered last week, just by way of reminder to sort of again set the table for us.

We saw last week that the New Testament establishes two offices of leadership within the church, elders and deacons. And by the way, not apostles. There's nothing in the New Testament that suggests that the office of apostle was going to continue throughout the church age.

There are apostles who are named in the New Testament. There are people who are called apostle in a little a sense, that is sort of as a sent one or an emissary, but only 12, 13 men with the apostle Paul had the status of being apostle with a capital A, that is having the type of authority and working the signs that an apostle did.

And there's no qualifications given in the New Testament. There's no instructions given in the New Testament for the continuing office of the apostle. There was no expectation that that office was going to continue beyond the death of the 13 apostles in the New Testament era.

And so charismatic practice aside of appointing apostles and calling people apostles of churches, the New Testament gives no warrant for that whatsoever, just offices of elders and deacons. Second, the New Testament establishes one office of spiritual oversight.

That's the office of elder or pastor or overseer or shepherd. There's actually three different words that are used of that function in the New Testament, the word overseer, the word elder, and the word pastor or shepherd, better translated as shepherd.

Those three words all describe the one and self-same office and authority and function within a New Testament church. Number three, elders care for the spiritual needs or concerns of the church. Fourth, deacons care for the physical needs or concerns of the church and help the elders in their task in terms of caring for the spiritual needs.

Number five, the New Testament establishes a plurality of both. Remember that we saw it's elders and deacons in a single church. Not one man dictating from on high his vision of leadership or his vision from the church, but a plurality of biblically qualified men who jointly together pastor the local church.

That is the New Testament model. Number six, the authority of the elders is delegated, limited, and accountable. They are under shepherds who will give an account to the great shepherd when he appears.

And that is something that we are reminded of in 1 Peter 5, which we read earlier, and in chapter 13 of our passage here, verse 20, where he refers to the great shepherd of the sheep who has come back from the dead.

There's a reference there to the fact that these leaders will also stand before that great shepherd of the sheep. And then number seven, the elders are under the authority of the word of God. That is their sphere.

They have no authority outside of the word of God. The word of God limits their authority and prescribes the way in which they exercise that authority. Elders do not have authority in your house to govern the minutia of your house.

They are really those who are given the oversight and leadership within the household of God. And then finally, those are the leaders, I think, that are mentioned in verse 17. Their work is described, they keep watch over your souls, describing a shepherding ministry or spiritual care.

So thus we can see that God's design in church leadership is for the good and flourishing of His blood-bought saints. That is His concern. For the good and flourishing of those for whom Christ died, that is why God appoints leadership.

He establishes authority in the home, in the church, and in civil government, three different and distinct spheres of authority that God has established, and we are called to submit appropriately to the appropriate authorities in an appropriate way in all three of those realms, always for the good of His people.

And today we're going to look at the details of this verse and what it teaches. This is an exhortation to obedience to those who are kingdom citizens who are looking forward to that city which is to come.

Remember, the context is that we have gone out of the city. We have abandoned our past life, our past commitments, our past religious persuasions and convictions. We've gone outside of the city to the place of reproach where Christ is, and there we are a new people.

There we have a new covenant community, as it were, a new people called out by Christ, and there we bear His reproach. And then having been brought into that new relationship, that new community of people, we are to submit to those whom God has appointed to take care of our souls.

I see in this verse, verse 17, three reasons why we are to obey and submit to our spiritual leaders. First, because of the nature of the care that they give. Second, because of the dangers that we face.

And then third, because of the account that we will give. Because of the nature of their care, the dangers that we face, and the account that they will give. Those are three reasons why we submit to spiritual leadership.

Let's look at the first one, because of the nature of their care. This is not the first time that he has mentioned leaders and the care that they have given in this passage. You remember back in chapter 13, verse 7, and this was quite a while now because I was off for several weeks, but in chapter 13, verse 7, he exhorted them to remember those who led you, who spoke the Word of God to you, and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith.

He addresses past leaders in verse 7 and reminds them of their faithful service. They have spoken the Word of God to you, and then he calls upon them to call to their mind that example, and having seen the outcome or the end of their faith, indicating that these were men who had served well and then passed on, he says, imitate that faith.

One of the distinguishing marks of those faithful leaders is that they had been faithful to the Word of God, to share and speak the Word of God with the people, and he calls upon them to remember that and to remember the result of that and then to imitate their faithfulness.

And now he commands concerning living leaders to obey and submit to them. Verse 17 again, obey your leaders and submit to them for they keep watch over your souls. There's two verbs there. Both of them are imperatives.

Both of them are commands, and they go together and they do have something of similar meaning. There's a little bit of overlap in the word obey and the word submit because they do kind of go together, and while they are different shades of the same idea, there is a bit of overlap and some commentators say it is difficult actually to distinguish the meaning between these two.

I think it's possible to distinguish the meaning between the two, but they are not perfect synonyms. They are very similar to one another. The word obedience here means to listen to or to follow, and the word submit means to yield or give way to or to defer to.

Now when I use the word obey, and we see it in our passage here, we tend to think of the kind of obedience that is commanded of children in Ephesians 6, verse 1, children, obey your parents and the Lord for this is right.

And if you're a parent, you understand the concept of that type of unquestioning, trusting, loyal obedience at the very first command, not the third or fifth or tenth time that they're told to do something, but you understand that kind of obedience, and you might think, is that the kind of obedience that we give to church leaders?

No, not necessarily. This is a different word that is used here that is also translated with our English word obey. Obey. This word has the meaning of giving heed to something or following after something.

It also describes a persuasion or a certainty. It has the idea or the connotation of trusting and relying upon something, of being persuaded to something or convinced of something. In fact, it is not just translated as obey in Scripture, it is also translated as trust or trusted, confidence, convinced, and persuaded.

So this is not a trust and a following that is a blind trust or a following, nor even a slavish obedience. It is the type of obedience that comes as a result of proper persuasion. That's the idea. In fact, John Owen in his commentary on Hebrews says the word signifies an obedience on persuasion.

An obedience on persuasion. Now the kind of obedience that your children are called to give to you is not an obedience upon persuasion. It is an obedience, full stop, period. You don't have to persuade them.

You don't need to reason with them. In fact, children need to be trained to obey without reasoning, without persuading, without being convinced. They need to be trained to obey without question. That's that kind of obedience.

This is not that kind of obedience. This is a heeding or a following after something upon the persuasion of something. So now I ask you, what is the basis of that persuasion? What does an elder, a pastor, a teacher use to persuade us to give heed to something or to follow something?

It is the Word of God. That is the realm that is the tool of His persuasion. So I come to you and I say, look, this Tuesday you're all going out to dinner at Fiesta Benita because they need our help staying in business.

And since Micah doesn't work there any longer, they're really struggling to attract new customers. So we're going to all go out on Tuesday to Fiesta Benita. You must obey me because I am the pastor of the church.

Are you obligated to obey me? No. In fact, I would make the case you are obligated to disobey me for the very purpose of demonstrating that I have no authority to command you to do that at all. But if I stand up here and I say, husbands, you need to love your wives and cherish them like Christ loved the church.

And you need to use your God-given headship to serve your family and to love them selflessly and sacrificially because here's what the text of Scripture says, that this is our obligation. Are you obligated to obey that?

Yes, but not because I said it. I happen to just be the mouthpiece through which God is speaking that to you. So therefore, upon the persuasion of that, you are obligated to submit to that and obey it, not because I said it.

The fact that I said it is irrelevant to the conversation. It is only an obedience upon persuasion because that persuasion comes from the Word of God. And when shepherds are doing that, then they are pleading to their people and appealing to their people to submit, not to them for the sake of submitting to them, but really to the Word of God, which they are using as the instrument of persuasion.

The word submit does have the idea of obedience, to yield or to defer or to give way to. It's a bit of a stronger word, also a broader word. It simply means to defer or to give up what I might prefer to somebody else.

In a church almost of any size, you can't have a vote on every little aspect of church ministry and everybody gets their own little say. It's not a democracy at all in that sense. So there are going to have to be situations where people simply defer to one another.

The congregation defers to the leadership on certain things, trusting that God is going to work through that. And listen, the leaders of a church defer to one another. We talked about this last week. When you have a plurality of men who are leading a local congregation under the same authority, holding the same office, no one of them above the other, there has to be deference between the men who work together in that capacity or they can't function.

So there is a yielding and there is a submission. Alexander Strzok in his book, Biblical Eldership, which I would again commend to you. If you don't have that, you need to buy that book, Biblical Eldership.

In fact, this Tuesday, you need to go out and you need to buy Alexander Strzok's book on Biblical Eldership. Says this, a spirit of obedience and submission to authority is fundamental to Christian living.

Submission is the fruit of genuine humility and faith. It is a mark of the spirit-filled life. True submission to God naturally expresses itself in obedience and submission to earthly authority. Thus, genuine submission to God in His Word expresses itself in obedience and submission in the home, in marriage, at work, in society, and in the local assembly of believers.

Now there are two sides to this element of authority. First, the authority that is given to church leaders is a real and genuine authority. It's not simply, you know, we're just going to elect him to kind of lead the thing.

It's not that kind of authority. It is a real and genuine authority to operate and function under the headship and the leadership of Christ by the authority of the Word of God for the good of the people.

First Thessalonians chapter 5, listen to how Paul describes this as he speaks to the Thessalonians. But we request of you, brethren, that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you and have charge over you in the Lord and give you instruction, and that you esteem them very highly and love because of their work.

Live in peace with one another. Notice what he says there. He says they have charge over you in the Lord and give you instruction. Their authority is not a raw authority that they have by virtue of the fact that they have gone to a seminary or then voted in or recognized.

The authority is by virtue of the work that they do in the Lord because they give you instruction and it is a work that these men do. It's not simply a popularity contest or a beauty contest that establishes leaders in the church.

At least it should not be. Titus chapter 2 verse 15, Paul says to Titus, in very difficult circumstances, church circumstances, listen to this. This sounds stern and harsh to our modern ears, but listen, Titus 2 .15, these things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority.

Let no one disregard you. Now, there's a reason why that instruction was given to Titus in his situation. And I'm going to get to this a little bit later on when we talk about the dangers that we face.

He was in a serious situation that required him to stand with a spine of steel and to reprove those who were contradicting truth and to do so with sternness. Titus was dealing with false teachers, with false converts, and he needed to refute those who contradict.

So there is an authority, and this is the two sides of authority. There's an authority that is to be used to serve and better...to serve and encourage the flourishing of the people who are under that authority.

All authority should be used that way. All authority, everybody in authority will be called to an account for how they use their authority and it must be used for the good of those over whom they are given charge.

Having established that, that it is servant leadership, sacrificial leadership for the good of other people. There are also times when the threat is severe and the situation is tense and it is necessary for those who are in authority to draw the line and to draw it firmly and say, this far and no further.

And to rebuke and to reprove with all authority and let no one disregard them. There's a spectrum there, obviously. The person who is always gentle and never firm is like a parent who gets walked over all of the time.

And the person who is always firm and stern but never gentle and caring and compassionate is like a parent who doesn't deserve the respect of their children because they're always harsh to their children.

So there's a spectrum there of how that authority is to be used for the good of people. As Peter said, we read this is the beginning of the service, shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, that is you shouldn't be forced to do it.

You shouldn't do it if you don't like to do it, you don't want to do it, you don't want to serve in that capacity. So not under compulsion but voluntarily, according to the will of God and not with the wrong motive, Peter says, not for sordid gain but with eagerness.

And then listen to this, nor as yet lording it over those allotted to your charge. You don't lord it over those allotted to your charge. Now that I've got this position and this title and my name is on the wall inside the office, people are going to start listening to me.

That's not how any biblically qualified man would ever run anything. Now is authority abused? Even spiritual authority abused inside of churches? Yeah, it certainly is. I've seen the situations, not here in this church, but I've seen situations where spiritual authority has been abused to the detriment of the flock.

It is a disqualifying feature when somebody who is in a position of spiritual authority lords it over or abuses those who are under his charge, allotted to his care. Instead, authority is to be used with humility and love and grace, compassion, kindness, gentleness, and patience, to use that authority and that calling for the flourishing of others to advance the holiness and obedience and faithfulness and endurance and spiritual well-being of other people.

This is a spiritual work which you see from the word, keep oneself, that is translated as keep watch over your souls. It's a word that means to keep oneself awake. If used literally, it means to force yourself to stay awake and on guard and to look out like a watchman would look on a wall, constantly scanning the horizon for danger, alert to the danger.

He doesn't allow himself to fall asleep. But when the word is used metaphorically as it is here, it has the idea of guarding something and caring for something and keeping watch for something. And it is over souls that the leaders of the church are to take care.

The word soul there, psuche, means life or soul. It can also be translated as you or yourself. It describes the inner person, the heart, the mind, the life of the inner person. The NIV translates it you and they translate it this way, they keep watch over you.

But I think in this context, what is meant here is the idea of inner life or soul. The elder is not just looking over physical bodies, but his desire is for the good and the flourishing of those under his charge, particularly their inner self, their inner life, their soul, their spirit.

He has an interest to the care of things that go for their good and for the good of their soul. In other words, the shepherd is concerned for one's spiritual health and growth and development, not marketing the brand or enlarging the platform or getting likes on social media or buildings and lands and numbers and any of that.

But instead, it is the guarding of the flock and the watching out for the things that endanger the flock spiritually that is the concern for an elder. And you see that this is the example that is given by the author of Hebrews.

He's been doing this from the very beginning of the book. He warned them about the dangers of disobeying the truth. He has warned them of the dangers of false doctrine, encouraged them to look to Christ.

He has exhorted them to their endurance and cast their gaze upon Christ, looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith. He has encouraged them. He has consoled them. He has exhorted them to spiritually good disciplines and spiritually good beliefs and theology.

He is shepherding their souls in this way, even through this book. This book is one long shepherding of their souls and instructing them in the things that they need. And we should submit, therefore, to those who do that work because of the nature of their work, the nature of their care.

Elders and deacons have authority from Christ to care for His people and that care is intended for the good and flourishing of God's blood-bought people. And therefore, that's the first reason we should submit to it.

Second, because of the dangers we face. And this is implied by the word, they keep watch over your soul. You don't need to keep watch over something that does not have the potential of being endangered.

We keep watch over things that have risk of being endangered by something else. The word shepherd, one of the three words that's used of an elder or an overseer, that word has the idea of bringing out to pasture, of leading and feeding and tending and protecting, to protect namely against wolves and predators and hirelings and thieves and robbers.

That was the imagery of the first century. In an agrarian culture, they would have been familiar with the imagery of a shepherd. His job was to lead them around, to protect them, to watch over them, to keep guard over the flock, to be aware of the dangers.

Long before the wolf was in the midst of the flock ravaging the people, the shepherd had to see that wolf on the horizon and to know of it and to alert others to its presence and be aware of where those dangers were at and of their proximity to his flock of people.

That was his charge. And if he was negligent or if he fell asleep or he wasn't watchful, then he could mean the loss of sheep. The dangers to our souls include sin and falsehood, the deceitfulness of sin, the deceitfulness even of our own hearts, the allure of the flesh and the temptations of this world and our ability to rationalize our sin and to justify it and even to ignore it is truly jaw-dropping and stunning.

We have a capacity to deceive ourselves concerning our sin that should horrify us at the deepest part of our being. That must be guarded. That must be watched over. Not only that, but falsehood, false doctrine, false prophets and teachers.

Scripture warns about these things. Small errors in theology that will hamper your progress in the faith and then there are big errors of theology that will poison your soul and even rob you of eternal rewards.

And the proliferation of that poison in our day with the speed of the internet is just stunning. So a shepherd needs to know the history of error and the history of theology, the history of the church.

He needs to know the difference between what is true and what is almost true. He needs to know what is false. He needs to have the ability to spot it, to answer it and to explain why it is that that is false, why it's falsehood.

That's the job of a shepherd. The danger is always real and it is ever-present. In the book of Acts chapter 20, which we read last week in verse 28, the apostle Paul was giving encouragement and exhortation to the elders of the church in Ephesus and he had called them out to the shore at Miletus and gave them this charge.

Listen to the somber and sober language that he uses in verse 28 and following. "'Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God, which He purchased with His own blood.'".

Now listen to this. I want you to hear this with soberness. "'I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves, men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.

Therefore, be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one of you with tears.'". Threats from without and threats from within. That's what we have to guard against.

2 Peter 2 verse 1, Peter warned, "'False prophets arose among the people, just so there will be false teachers among you who will secretly introduce destructive, that is, soul-destroying heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.'".

So elders must aggressively at times deal with that danger and have an ability to refute those who contradict and to deal with the error that is sometimes inside the camp and sometimes outside the camp.

In Titus chapter 1, I mentioned the serious situation that Titus was dealing with when Paul, after he gives the instruction for elders, at the end of that list of qualifications in chapter 1, Paul says this,.

"'They must hold fast the faithful word, which in accordance with the teaching, so that he may be able to exhort in sound doctrine,' that is the positive aspect of teaching, "'and to refute those who contradict that sound doctrine.'".

Why? Paul says this, "'For there are many men, rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, who must be silenced because they're upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach for the sake of sordid gain.

One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, "'Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.'". This testimony is true. "'For this reason, reprove them severely so that they may be sound in the faith, not paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the truth.

To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled. They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed.'".

That is some of the most scathing, rebuking, and reproving language that you will read in all of the New Testament. And it's given to a man who was on an island, who was told to appoint elders in every city as he was directed.

These are the qualifications. And then Titus, he says, these men who are teaching these things need to be reproved and rebuked, and they need to be silenced because they are destroying people's lives, families.

I'll contrast that kind of instruction and attitude with the attitude of the sleeping shepherds which we are so familiar with in our own day. When it is not uncommon to be in a church or to be part of a church that the shepherds don't even know what the dangers are.

They couldn't identify a false teacher if one walked into a service wearing a t-shirt that says, I'm a false teacher. They still wouldn't believe that. Give them the benefit of the doubt. They don't understand the difference between truth and error or even the nuances of that.

They can't spot the dangers anywhere in the flock, outside of the flock, and even if they think somebody is a danger, they're very hesitant to even call them a false teacher or to identify them at all.

That's the mark of a modern American evangelicalism writ large. That's the fact. It's so much different than what we find in the New Testament where Paul, with the motivation of love, says to Timothy, the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

For some men, having turned from these things, have turned aside to fruitless discussion, wanting to be teachers of the law, even though they do not understand either what they're saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions.

Jude, at the end of the New Testament, he says in verse 3, I wanted to make every effort to write to you about our common salvation, but I found it necessary instead to appeal that you can turn earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed to the saints.

Then Jude says in verse 4, for certain persons have crept in unnoticed. They've slithered their way into the church, those, Jude says, who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.

A qualified shepherd, one that is doing his job, can spot the danger to the flock on the horizon before the flock even knows that the danger exists. That's the point of a shepherd. That is not what everybody in a congregation is able to do, but the shepherds must all be able to do that.

The author of Hebrews does that very thing in this chapter. You remember back in verse 9, we said, don't be carried away by varied and strange teachings that have to do with food and the altar and the sacrifices.

He's warning them about the danger of false teaching. And one of the ways that they are protected against the dangers of false teaching and strange teachings is by submitting to the elders and the shepherds who are watching out for their souls.

So we should submit because of the nature of their care, because of the dangers that we face, and then third, because of the account that we will all give. There is an accounting to be given by everybody, those who lead and those who are called to submit to that leadership.

Both parties are accountable. No one escapes this accountability. As those who will give an account is a reference to the leaders, they have to give an account for their leadership. That's true. So if you defer to a leader and you say, it's not the way I would have done it, I don't necessarily like that, here's the good news, you don't have to give an account for what it is that you're deferring to them for.

And there's bad news there for shepherds that we have to make sure that we are doing our duty with diligence and with fastidiousness and diligence, otherwise, did I say diligence twice? With fastidiousness, diligence, both the same thing, that we have to make sure that we are doing our duty in that way because we have to give an account.

In other words, we all have to stand before the great shepherd. Those who are called to submit to that leadership, the warning to them is this would be unprofitable to you if you make their service to you a grief instead of a joy.

So first, a word about the accountability of shepherds. You'll notice in verse 20 where the author says, now, the God of peace who brought up from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord.

He is describing there the great shepherd of the sheep. And though this passage does not describe in detail the accountability of the elders, it does describe the elders as being those who must give an account.

And I think that the reference in verse 20 to the great shepherd of the sheep is a reminder to the elders that you will stand before the one who called you to shepherd his people. In other words, there is a shepherd that are over the shepherds in the church and they must give an account to him.

First Peter 5 verse 4 says, when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Now the account that an elder is to give is not an account that has anything to do with his salvation.

I want you to understand that. I'm not talking about his salvation. It's not that you're going to show up and a negligent shepherd is going to find that his negligence in the flock or his lack of due diligence has resulted in his loss of salvation and now he goes to hell.

No, like you, shepherd salvation rests entirely upon the work of Christ and what he has done. It has been forever secured. So we're not talking about salvation, but we are talking here about the gaining of rewards or the suffering of loss.

In other words, it would be unprofitable for a shepherd to not do his shepherding well, just as it would be unprofitable for somebody to not submit to well-given leadership and shepherding and care for your souls.

So we're talking about the gaining of reward or the loss of reward. Peter describes the reward for shepherds as the unfading crown of glory. Now the accountability of the sheep is described in that phrase, this would be unprofitable for you.

That's something of an understatement. It's an understatement given for the effect of emphasizing it. So it's kind of a way of emphasizing something by understating it. In other words, if you were to state it positively, Peter is saying, this would be disastrous for you.

What would be disastrous for you? If you conduct yourselves in such a way that you cause grief to the shepherds of your souls instead of joy. For he says in verse 17, let them do this, not let them give an account, but let them keep watch over your soul.

Let them keep watch over your soul with joy and not with grief. Because if it is with grief, then this would be unprofitable for you. This would be disastrous for you, he says. When a congregation causes their shepherds and their leaderships great joy in their work, the shepherds end up doing that shepherding with eagerness.

They continue in it, they flourish in it. It's easy for them and then it becomes profitable for the entire congregation. Their diligence and their hard work is rewarded by the fruit in the lives of the people and by joy in their own life.