Outside The Camp Part 1

Hebrews 13 and John 19: Jesus Outside the Camp

Well, so you know where we're going. We're going to take a slight break from the preaching through Zechariah. For the end of the year, I wanted to speak more distinctly and more profoundly and singularly about Jesus Christ.

And so I'm going to preach this afternoon from Hebrews 13, 11 -13. I'm going to read in conjunction with that John 19 -17, but the Hebrews passage will be the text. And then God willing, not next week, because next week our brother Conley is going to preach in the afternoon service again from Isaiah.

The week following that, I wish to do a second part of this small series and following that, Lord willing, back to Zechariah and the minor prophets. So if you turn to Hebrews 13, 11 -13, God willing, these verses will sustain us through these two messages.

Let me read first John 19 -17 and then the Hebrews passage, John 19 -17. So they took Jesus and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called the place of a skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha.

And then to Hebrews 11 -13 at verse 11, for the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.

Therefore, let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. So these are the verses that will occupy us this afternoon. And the apostle there, the apostle to the Hebrews, he mixes a couple of different things together in order that we might know something.

And this thing that we might know is, where is Jesus to be found? He says, let us go to him outside the camp. So where do we find Jesus? We find him outside the camp. Well, Jesus is not physically outside the camp.

The angels told the apostles, he is not here, but he is risen. And the angels again told the apostles, why are you looking after him? This same Jesus will return to you in the same way that he left you.

So what does it mean to go outside the camp and go to Jesus there? Well, it means, let us be identified with him. It means to be identified with Christ Jesus. Let's take upon ourself those things that he requires of his people, those things that are like him, that Christ-likeness of character, that fruit of the Spirit that we all strive after.

Let us be that. Let us go to him. Let us be identified with him. Jesus is outside. He went outside the gate, meaning the gate of Jerusalem. He went outside the gate and he suffered. And now we're to find him outside the camp.

So the gate is Jerusalem's. That's the one he passed through on his way to Golgotha. That's the one he passed through on the way to his cross there at Golgotha. Who's the camp? It says, let us go to him outside the camp.

The camp then is the company of his own people. The ones of whom John writes, his own did not receive him. Within the camp of his own, within that camp, he was rejected. And so he is outside the camp.

And we go to him there, outside the camp. They drove him out of there. They drove him out of the camp. Rejection is the reproach of his own people. So this then is the goal for you and I who believe in him, who believe in Jesus.

We are bidden to leave the security of man's praise of societal acceptance and enter to where Jesus is. And what was it that he bore outside the camp? The reproach of those within the camp. The reproach of those within the camp.

So he's outside the camp and that's where we go to him. Let us therefore go to him outside the camp. Do you want to go there? Do you want to be where he is? I think we would all say yes, but it's not so easy a question as it might seem just in asking it so simply.

That's not so easy a question. We need to wait and bring the illumination of Scripture to bear on such a query as that. Jesus speaks in the Gospels of counting the cost of discipleship. He speaks of a cross that we must bear.

I ask again, do we want to go to where he is? It's the same as asking, do you want to count the cost with me? Do you want to reckon this cost of discipleship? Let us put the cross on our own shoulders and weigh it and see the drag that it puts upon us.

How hard it is to pull and go outside the gate or outside the gate with it. Do you want to be where Jesus is? Let's go where he is then. Yes, outside the camp, but let's let Scripture tell us what that means, what that entails.

The author combines allusion to Psalm 69 verse 9, and that says the reproaches of those who reproached you have fallen on me. He combines that with Scriptures he assumes his readers are familiar with regarding the sanctity of the Israelite camp.

So it's what I want us to think about for a moment is the camp of the Lord, the camp of God's people, and what that was to be like. And give us an idea from that of what it means to be outside those limitations or those environs.

The camp of the Lord, you see, was a holy place. There was a holy place. Chapter 23 of Deuteronomy gives us many specifics on who or what must not be found there in the camp of the Lord. I want to look at some of those in a moment.

We're not going to take that text apart, but I'm just going to throw at you some of the salient points of it. We'll see what company our Lord, history's only sinless man, humanity's sole claim to a life deserving only commendation from God to where he was consigned to when he suffered outside the gates or outside the camp.

But before I look at the exclusions that Deuteronomy 23 has for the camp, Deuteronomy 23, 14, the end of that passage tells us why there's such a concern, why those exclusions from the camp were necessary.

So I'll give you the end and then we'll go back and pick up some of those salient points. Deuteronomy 23, verse 14 says, here's the reason for it, because the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp, that he may not see anything indecent among you.

Why is the camp to be clean, orderly, and holy? Because the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp, that he may not see anything indecent among you. Do you feel ready to obey the apostle? Do you feel ready now to go outside the camp and onto the terrain of what is clearly to be reproach, to bear the reproach of Christ?

I don't want us to answer too quickly. I want you to hold that question in abeyance for just a moment. Wait until you hear what there was in that land, that area outside the camp. What were you to take outside of the camp and was never to be seen within it?

Deuteronomy 23, verse 10 through 11, would ban any man who in the night had a bodily omission. You're outside the camp, not holy. Verses 12 to 13 of Deuteronomy 23 requires that bodily waste, that excrement, be attended to there, outside the camp, because the Lord your God is holy and he is within the camp.

He's not to see anything like that. We look up at verse 1 of that passage in Deuteronomy 23, eunuchs out. Chapter 23, verse 2, children of unholy unions outside the camp. Chapter 23, verse 3, Moabites and Ammonites who are the offspring of the unholy union of Lot and his daughters.

Out. All or any of this, if found in the company of the people of God, impugns the honor and the holiness of God. So all of that, not to be found within, but to be ejected, to be rejected, to be flung, as it were, and attended to outside the camp.

But there's still more. Remember, I'm asking you, do you want to be where Jesus is? He says, let us go to him. Let's go to him outside the camp. What are we finding? What are we finding? All that is unholy.

All that is unclean. But there's even more. There's several references made to what Leviticus chapter 4, verse 11 requires. It's in several places in scripture, so we just need to read one. What else goes outside the camp?

Listen to this. But the skin of the bull and its flesh, and we're speaking, of course, of the sin offering, the bull, the animal that gave its life for the rituals of the temple, the sin offering to God, but the skin of the bull and its flesh, with its head, its legs, its entrails, and its dung, all taken far from the sensibilities of a holy people outside the gates and away from the camp.

So when Christ was forced outside of the camp, it was away from the safety and the company within, where there was order, where there was cleanliness and fellowship. And instead of that, to what? Garbage, rotting flesh, human waste, abandonment, reproach.

You see, when his own rejected him, this is the company they joined him to. And much of this was prefigured when we read in Luke chapter 4. After his temptation, after a successful temptation in the wilderness, his defeat of Satan there in the wilderness, and satisfying what Israel had failed during their 40 years in the wilderness, in his 40 days, he victoriously satisfied.

He went to a synagogue, and he read, and they were amazed at his gracious words. And do you remember what happened when he gave them the upshot of those words? They were enraged at him, and they chased him out of the synagogue, and they were going to throw him over the brow of the hill, but then, what does Luke say?

He just passed through them. From that moment, they were pushing him outside of the camp, outside of the company of his own people. His own did not receive him. This is the company we are called to. This is the environment we need to traverse in order to get to that place where the apostle says in Hebrews 13, verse 11, 12, and 13, to go to him outside the camp.

That's what awaits us there, all of those things. Well, Jesus, of course, is in heaven. He's at his Father's right side. He is enthroned. He is ruling his people by his word, by his spirit. Yet we can, we must meet with him.

Where? In palatial halls of great castles, in the heights of a tall tower, at the academy of wards, all the beautiful, all the powerful, all the influential people are gathered together there, and crowds are swooning just for a glance at one of them when they step out of their car.

Maybe that's where we go and find someone so beautiful and someone so divine and so precious as the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, it's none of these places that we find him. Where does the apostle guide us?

What's our road map? You say it over and over again, outside the camp, away from the cleanliness, away from the order, away from the company, the society of men, to a place where those other things are consigned.

Outside the camp, putrefying flesh of animals long since slain, the forgiveness their blood won, soon needing to be given by another poor beast, heads, entrails, all that. Here is where our Lord suffered.

Here's where he suffered, outside the gate. Here our beautiful Savior was consigned, and here you must go if you join with him, to be identified with him. You know, in my younger days, which are fairly long past at this point, but in my younger days, we did not have landfills.

We didn't have recycling centers. You know what we had? Garbage dumps. They were just garbage dumps, and they were just what the name implies. Garbage of any and all sorts. The word recycle might have existed, but it wasn't in use.

Everything, as the word implies, garbage, dumped there. It was just put there. Great mounds of festering, steaming refuse, pressing itself down by its sheer weight into the stench that only fleas and rats could abide.

Now, today we can often smell the Newby Park landfill over on Dixon Landing Road, just past Milpitas and your way to Fremont there on Highway 880. It assaults the nostrils. It brings complaints from the residents, but you have no idea how cultured we are now.

Which do you think would be closest to outside the camp? Our Newby landfill, or the garbage dump of my younger years? I won't bother to tell you all the places around us where you might even be living, or I might be living, that are built on those old dumps, but they were all over.

And I think they illustrate for us far better than a landfill that we have today, or a recycling center. What it was that Jesus was pushed out to. What else was consigned there? For us, we have, of course, no literal camp to vacate.

And the gate that Jesus passed under on His way to the cross isn't even there anymore. I mean, the Romans in 70 A .D., some 37 years after Jesus' ascension, they destroyed it. So, how do we obey the Apostle?

We all want to be where Jesus is. I know I speak to a body that says, I want to be with Jesus. I want to go to Him. Whatever the Apostle says, I want to do it. How do we obey? How do we leave whatever camp we're in and go to where Christ is?

Isn't the purpose that we're given for the journey? Go to Him outside the camp, and here's our purpose. Here's what we're looking for. Bear the reproach He endured. We need to leave the security that we so cherish.

Jesus said, whoever loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me, and whoever does not take his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me.

And could we read in here a little bit and say, and whoever does not leave the camp and go outside the camp to where awaits the dung and the rotting flesh of the sacrificial animals and all those other things, whoever is not willing to go there and be identified with Him who suffered there is not worthy of Him.

He bore reproach. I mean, the world reproached Him. Everything He stood for, righteousness, self-control, godliness, everything He stood for is anathema to the world. Pride of life and possessions is everything to them.

And now we begin to feel, Lord willing, some of the cost of discipleship. The weight of the cross that you picked up when Jesus picked you up, we've been taken out of that system. You're no longer children of this world, but you're citizens of the kingdom of heaven.

You were once darkness, but now you're children of light. Live as children of the light. We've been taken out of that system, and therefore the reproaches that fell upon Jesus Christ fall upon us. And where do we find those?

By exiting the camp. By going away from those things in which we have found before our security, our acceptance. The world hated Jesus first, and now that hatred is ours. The Lord made that clear. The world hates you.

Know that it hated me first. They reproached Him in Israel, an attitude they had which rage has never abated. The reference that the apostle uses is back to Psalm 69, where it speaks of Christ's zeal for God's honor, which led directly to the reproach of men against Him.

And when did that begin? It began with the cleansing of the temple. We're going to read of that in John chapter 2. The apostle John writes that it was after the Holy Spirit was given. Then we remembered what is said, and it's Psalm 69, is what he refers to.

The zeal for your house has consumed me. It has eaten me up. Zeal for God's house, for God's honor, for God's holiness, was all to Him. It was Psalm 69 that foretold of the cleansing of the temple. The psalm says, though, that the reproaches of God are what fell on the psalmist.

And the reproaches of God are what fell on to Christ. And it also implies that to reproach Christ, then, is to reproach Christ for the reproach of God. And that was played out in the temple cleansing, which that psalm foretold.

Jesus was so concerned for His Father's honor, that when He saw it besmirched in His own house, He took it as against Himself. Those are the reproaches that fell on you, fell on Him. Or that fell on you, fell on me, as the psalm says.

So if we stand in line with Jesus, then we can say, bear the reproaches people foist on to God, as though they were meant personally for me. The reproaches that fall upon God, as though they were personally meant for me.

It's what reproaches that He endured. How did this happen to one who was sinless? No charge of sin ever stood up against Him. Isaiah chapter 3 verse 5 says what? It says that it was our iniquities. That was the reproach that He endured.

And we could ask, how did He bear them? The prophet spoke of Christ, who we know to have been sinless. He never did iniquity. But then Isaiah 53, 6 says it was the Lord. It was God who placed our iniquity on Him.

So it was God the Father who made Christ His Son to be a reproach. We bore our reproach before the Father, and the Father reproached Him for what He bore. Let me say that again. He, Christ, bore upon Himself our reproach before the Father.

And when He became sin for us, the Father reproached Him because He was bearing sin. That's the great exchange in 2 Corinthians 5, 21. The Father made Jesus to be sin for us. He became all that is reproachable.

All that is wrong with us is Christ on the cross. The Lord is caught here in this whirlwind of derision. The Father lays our sin on Him. He reproaches His own Son who became for us the reproach of the Father.

The people to whom He came thought Him smitten by God, which is, in one way, they were right, but in a little else. And although correct that God had smitten Him, it's only by God's transforming grace that our hearts believe that He was smitten for me.

The prophet goes on and says they esteemed Him not. They reproached Him. The reproaches of God and man were upon Him, from God because He became sin, from man because He stood for God. He's not reproached because He's outside the camp.

He is outside the camp because He is reproached. Our neighbors, our friends, our co-workers, these will all keep us within the warm confines of acceptability and societal approval. When we're in the world, we're gladly its friend, and they us.

But for many, once conversion issues forth into a new life and a world-challenging behavior, then we feel the reproach, and eventually our banishment from within to without the camp. And when we feel the sting of that rejection, when we feel that rejection, that disgust, because we are standing for Christ, we are bearing His reproach, we can thank God for it, because then we are truly identified with Him, with Christ.

Hebrews 13 and Romans 15 both quote this psalm. And in both quotes of this psalm, there is, it is used as a support, as a call to moral excellence. Hebrews enjoins us, because of His reproach, to bear the reproach that is ours or will be ours when we remember, what, brotherly love, to show hospitality, to think of Christ's prisoners as if it was we who were in chains, to hold the marriage bed in high honor, to stay aloof from money and the covetousness that it brings.

He says, bear the reproach that those behaviors will bring upon you, because when you do that, you have gone outside the camp to where Jesus is, and are bearing the reproach that He endured. In Romans 15, Paul tells us to do what?

He tells us to bear with one another's weaknesses, to think of others as better than ourselves. That's not going to get us a lot of credit in the world outside of Christendom, will it? But what's the motive behind this in Romans chapter 15 and verse 3?

For Christ did not please Himself, but as it is written, and here's our psalm, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me. The author to the Hebrews, Paul the Apostle to the Romans, both use exactly these words to motivate us into this reproach of men.

But I would say, great credit with God, because this is the behavior that we have of us, this is the fruit of the Spirit, we are displayed, this is Christ's likeness. And if it's reproach, then let it be reproach.

Because what do we find when we bear that reproach? Where are we? Outside the camp. Who is with us outside the camp? It's Jesus. In chapter 2 of Hebrews, the author says, but we see Jesus. Well no, we don't, not with our eyes, but we see Jesus, we know He's there, we know that He lives and our Redeemer lives forever.

We know He lives and He sits at the right hand of His Father. We see Jesus because the faith God gave us to believe in Jesus tells us He's there. We look up to heaven and we see the sun or stars or whatever it is, but it takes only a moment of meditation upon our faith and we look up to that same star and say, Jesus put that star there.

Jesus named that star. It's twinkling at exactly the rate that He said, I see Jesus. Same way that we find Him when we go outside the camp and we bear the reproach that He endured. Ultimately, of course, His reproach was where?

His reproach was at Golgotha where all the rage and enmity and insults and derision of man came upon Him. This brings us to this table that is set before us. It's here that we recall all this reproach, all this hatred, all this sin bearing and how it took the form, what form it took in recorded history.

It's Golgotha, it's outside the camp. He's rejected, He's discarded, He's forced out there away from men. And what is this that we're driving towards? It's nothing but the cross. Nothing but the cross.

When the apostle says, for the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin, he's talking about the old temple ways, they're burned outside the camp.

So Jesus also suffered outside the gate. Outside the gate, outside the camp really mean much the same thing, but the gate more specifically brings us to the cross that He had dragged to Golgotha as He was forced outside the actual, the literal gate of Jerusalem.

Outside the gate, outside the camp. And He went there to suffer in order to sanctify the people through His own blood. The cross of Jesus Christ. The table before us. The broken bread, His body, which is broken for you, the fruit of the vine, grape juice or wine, His blood poured out for the sins of many, for the forgiveness of the sins of many.

If He bore reproach in His life, the Father, once atonement had been made for those whose sins He bore, those whose reproach He bore, His Father exalted Him to His right hand from where He rules until He returns.

All this reminded to us, brought not just to memory, but we are strengthened in our spirit as God by His Spirit attends with us as we partake of this table in a few moments. And we remember here, as we partake, this reproach of Christ that we bear.

That as the world hated Him, so they hate us. As the world derided Him, so those who stand for Him bear forth His fruit, those branches that are truly in the vine and are bearing fruit to His glory. If in all this reproach, if in all this rejection from our friends, our co-workers, our family members, from loved ones, if in all this we know confidently we are where the Apostle would tell us to be, outside the camp, and we know with the same assurance that there we find who?

Christ Jesus our Lord. Then so let it be. Let us stay outside the camp. No matter what I step in, no matter how many hides are rotting around us, whatever else has been tossed away, if Christ is there, it's the right place to be.

Amen?