Outside The Camp

He was our sin offering, our scapegoat. All our sins were laid on Him. He took them outside the camp and there they remain.

pngtree.com

My husband and I were enthusiastic campers in our younger days. We started off in tents but then we upgraded to various camper vans, which, to be honest, is not real camping but we like to kid ourselves it is. We love that sort of holiday, where we can go out in the day but then really look forward to coming back to the campsite, where it was familiar and relaxing. Sometimes we don’t even go outside the camp, choosing to stay in the familiar and comfortable surroundings. 

The letter of Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians. The writer reminds these Christians of something in their Jewish past, to encourage Jewish members of the Church to maintain their faith in Jesus Christ and not to return to their former ways as some of them were doing. They were being tempted to go back to a place that was familiar and where they felt comfortable. In Hebrews 13:11-14 it says: The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. 12 And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. 13 Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. 14 For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

Each year in the Jewish calendar on the Day of Atonement the nation would gather and the high priest would offer a bull in sacrifice for his own sin. Then he would take two goats and present them before the Lord. He would choose one of them by lots to be sacrificed and the other was the scape goat.

He would sprinkle the blood of the animals on the mercy seat. Then he would lay his hands on the head of the living goat and confess all the sins of the people of Israel. Then an appointed man would take that goat out into the wilderness and let it go. The goat symbolically carried with it all the sins of the people which had been confessed. The priest would take all that was left of the sacrificed animals, and bring the remains outside the camp and there he would burn them. 

That was the event that the author of Hebrews was relating to the Jewish Christians in the above scripture. He wanted them to realise that Jesus was the fulfilment of all that God had intended for the people in the annual Day of Atonement.

The area “outside the camp” was a “no-man’s land.” Apart from the place where they discarded sacrificial carcasses, it was the place where foreigners lived, it was the place to which they banished the leprous, infirmed and suffering. Anyone who was ‘unclean’ had to live outside the camp. It was a place where the rubbish was dumped and it was a place of execution for those who had broken God’s laws. 

When the Jewish religion centred around the city of Jerusalem, outside the city walls became the ‘outside the camp’. This is the place where our Saviour was crucified. Jesus went “outside the city gate” to identify with anyone who was rejected. Isaiah 53:12 prophesied that part of Jesus’ substitution judgment for sin was that He was numbered with the transgressors. He went “outside the city gate” to the place where criminals were crucified. He went “outside the city gate” because He was our sin offering, our scapegoat. All our sins were laid on Him. He took them outside the camp and there they remain. We carry them no more. We are set free by the blood of the One who bears the guilt of our sin

In the above scripture the writer of Hebrews goes on to say that we too must go to Him, outside the camp and endure the reproach He endured. If Jesus died outside the camp, then why would we think that Christians should be spared the experience of going through the same thing? As Jesus put it in John 15:18-20 ‘If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.’

Jesus said that the attitude of the world toward believers would be hatred because they are different from the world. In John 12 it talks about people wanting to cling to their dead rituals and their Temple worship, because that’s what made them comfortable. That sort of religion is no threat to the world. If our faith doesn’t challenge or threaten them, they can accept and tolerate it but if we are brave enough to make it clear that Christ is the the only hope then they will turn away or balk against it.

We are not meant to isolate ourselves from the world. Jesus said we must be an influence of salt and light to the world around us but we must not begin to adopt the same goals of the world, we shouldn’t be immersed in the things of the world, we shouldn’t talk and have the same priorities as they do. If that happens, we have become comfortable “inside the camp”. Paul said in Romans 12:2, ‘Do not be conformed to this world.’  No, we need to be sanctified, which means set apart. 

There are many examples in the Old and New Testaments where people have left their relatively easy life to step outside the camp. Moses left the Egyptian palace to lead the Israelites to the promised Land. Esther was a queen but she interceded on behalf of her people, the Jews, and saved many lives. Paul gave up his life and suffered many hardships bringing the Good News of Jesus to the Gentiles.

So let us, like them, go to Him, who suffered outside the city walls for us. Let us bear reproach for the sake of the lost. 

Help us Lord to come to You outside the camp. Help us not to conform to this world but to be set apart for You. Help us to step outside our comfort zone as You stepped outside of Yours by coming into this world to shed Your blood for us. Amen

I will end as usual with a quote from Charles Spurgeon on the subject:

‘The highway of holiness is the highway of communion. It is in this way we shall hope to win the crown if we are enabled by divine grace faithfully to follow Christ “outside the camp.” The crown of glory will follow the cross of separation. A moment’s shame will be well rewarded by eternal honour; a little while of witness-bearing will seem nothing when we are forever with the Lord.’

Author: Thelma Cameron

May God bless and enrich your life

Please feel free to share this article and other articles on this site with friends, family and others.