OUTSIDE THE CAMP
[p. 75] OUTSIDE THE CAMP
Hebrews 13:10 - 16; Exodus 20:24 - 26
My thought is to call attention, to the position becoming to those who love Christ at the present moment. Our position is determined by the position of Christ. Our love to Christ is tested practically by whether we are willing to respond to His movements; our love is continually put to the test by His movements. The movements of the Lord bring out whether we are loyal to Him in every respect, whether we are willing to be in correspondence to Him in every move.
Ruth was tested by the movements of Naomi, but she refused to return from following her. She would be in correspondence to Naomi whatever the circumstances might be. She says to Naomi, “Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried”. (Ruth 1:16,17) Now, as I understand it, genuine affection for Christ leads to complete correspondence to Christ whatever the circumstances may be. Our circumstances are such as put love to the test, as to whether it is Christ who is paramount with us or not. It is for this reason I desired to call attention to our position at the present time as determined by the position of Christ.
It is a very blessed thing, on the one hand, to know that God has determined our position in connection with His eternal purposes; it is all of God; we have had nothing to do with that. God has not allowed that to be left in our hands at all; it -is all of His eternal, sovereign decision. He has [p. 76] determined, our position according to His eternal counsels, and He has determined it in relation to and in correspondence to Christ’s position. It is a matter of His love, of course, but more important still, it is a question of His wisdom. Love is the spring of all with God, but wisdom is the handmaid of His love; so that in determining our position God has acted in wisdom as well as in love. Then, if God has acted in wisdom and love, He has acted rightly; all that God wills is infinitely right. God has given the assembly the most wonderful place conceivable, and that place, as determined by His wisdom, is infinitely right.
So it is a matter of God’s wisdom, to have given us the place He has given us in His purpose in correspondence to Christ; and whatever He has done is done in love, but also in wisdom, and it is entirely right. If He has determined the place of the assembly as that which is to be united to Christ, as the companion of Christ in heavenly glory, it is right that it should be so, and right in God’s sight. It has been determined in the wisdom of God that we should be the companions of Christ in heavenly glory, and that is according to His eternal purpose. If it had been left to men to choose their own portion, many believers might have preferred the millennial state of things for themselves. They might have preferred to have their portion on the renewed earth, with the pressure of death removed from their spirits, and surrounded with every blessing that earth could afford. But God has reserved some better things for us, beloved, in His wisdom, and because of His great love wherewith He loved us, He “even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved), and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: that in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches [p. 77] of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus”. (Ephesians 2:5 - 7)
God has a purpose in giving us this place of elevation, and it is right that we should have it; it is according to His wisdom and according to His love that we should be the companions of Christ for ever in heavenly glory. He has taken us into favour in the Beloved; it does not even say who the Beloved is, as if to show the unique place that Christ has in the affections of the Father.
Then another point is, God has power to do everything He pleases. Love is His motive spring, and wisdom is the agent of His love, but God has also power to effect every counsel of His will. In Ephesians everything is on the ground of excess; it is according to the exceeding greatness of His power, “which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places”. (Ephesians 1:20) God has raised Him from the dead and set Him there according to the greatness of His power. The sense of this mighty power is so set before the soul of the apostle, that when he comes to speak of that power being towards us, he speaks of the purpose of God as already accomplished. What a solid basis we are on when we come to speak of the eternal purpose of God! It is outside of us; it is all of His mighty power.
But when we come to speak of our position in this world, that, is an entirely different matter; we have something to do with that. When the Lord came down to this earth He became the great regulator of everything; like the sun in the heavens, He became the controller of everything. He came into the midst of a world of lawlessness and departure from God, and He answered perfectly to God in every way. Every thought of God found an answer in Christ here as Man. That was not in heaven, but it was here. The great idea in testimony is to [p. 78] bring out what is heavenly and to show its superiority over what is here. Christ is the ark of the testimony, and Moses got the light as to the ark on the mount; there was no contrariety up there; all was according to God there; and he received the tables of the testimony there. But Moses came down from the mount, and he brought with him the tables of the covenant; they were the record of the rights of God; they were the rights of God put into writing, but things had altered in the camp; a great change had come into the camp during the absence of Moses. Moses drew near to it, and he heard a sound of singing; there was a noise going up from the camp; the spirit of idolatry had laid hold of the camp. Now what will Moses do?
Moses had no power to bring that writing into the camp; there was no ark there to receive it, and he broke the tables there at the foot of the mount. It was his acknowledgment that he had no power to bring the tables of the covenant into the camp. Now think of Christ! What was it for Him to come into a scene like that; to come into a scene of lawlessness and idolatry, and to hold everything intact for God? What was it for Him to maintain everything for God; to maintain the law, and more, to magnify the law and make it honourable? He brought the law into the camp, and made it honourable there. That was the position of Christ here; in the midst of men the will of God was maintained intact, nothing was let go.
Now everything must be regulated by that; God’s will has been perfectly expressed here among men, and the expression of that will here in a Man drew out every possible evidence of the hatred of men. Man — the world, hates the expression of God’s will; and the Lord Jesus met with opposition at every step of His path, but He maintained the divine will in every circumstance; He is the ark of the [p. 79] covenant here. The ark of the covenant adjusts everything. Moses could not maintain the law in the face of what was there, he had to break the tables of the covenant; but the law is within the heart of Christ. Christ as Man here was the expression of God. Of course, He was “over all, God blessed forever”, but I speak of Him as a Man here, and that Man was the perfect expression of the divine nature; there was the perfect answer to the will of God in a Man. Think of the moral power necessary in order that a Man should hold the position for God here, in the face of the opposition of the world and of men! Think of what it meant for Him to be here entirely for the will of God, and answering to God at every step of His path! But since that has been so, the ark of the covenant — Christ in that character — must regulate everything; He adjusts everything: we must follow the ark.
Moses took the tabernacle and pitched it afar off from the camp; that was a wonderful thing, a solemn thing for a man to do. Moses was a man of faith, and he acted for God, and when lawlessness and idolatry have come into the camp, he takes the tabernacle and pitches it without the camp, afar off from the camp. Now God honoured Moses in that act, and the cloudy pillar came down and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and Jehovah talked with Moses. The Lord spake “face to face with Moses, as a man speaketh to his friend”. (Exodus 33:11) What an honour to confer on a man, beloved friends!
In Hebrews 13 we read that the Lord in order that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered “without the gate”; He must go outside the camp. It is there, that we find Him. The action of Moses confirms the action of every one in the camp who loves God; “every one which sought the Lord went out unto the tabernacle of the congregation, which was without the camp”, (Exodus 33:7)
[p. 80] There were some who worshipped in their tent doors, but a man’s tent door is no place in which to worship God but those who sought Him went outside the camp. It was divine instinct in Moses which led him to pitch the tabernacle outside the camp, far off from the camp, and he gave it a name: he called it the “tent of meeting”. What a provision for the people; what a provision for those who recognised the rights of Jehovah! Jehovah had a tent, and faith in Moses leads him to pitch it afar off from the idolatrous camp, and there it becomes the tent of meeting. Those who recognised God did not remain in their own tent doors, but they went forth to Jehovah.
There has been an action, for God of this character in our own day, and many have had their eyes opened to the divine movement in God’s mercy. We have had to take account of the action of a man, or of men, as done in the recognition of what is due to God, and in following the divine movement, we have found that it means an immense increase of blessing for the people of God. In Moses’ day the cloud of glory descended there, outside the camp, and the Lord spake with Moses, and Moses returns again into the camp. But there was one man who remained in the tabernacle; he departed not out of the tabernacle; he never left it. Moses was the one who set up the tent of meeting, but his servant Joshua, “a young man”, departed not out of it. I think there you get the two offices of the Lord; He is both Apostle and Priest. We see the honour conferred on the Apostle, but there is the one, too, with power to lead the people in, and He never leaves the tabernacle. Thus we know Him spiritually today. I have no doubt we shall find both these things, if we are content to be led by the Lord.
Christ Himself deliberately suffered without the gate; the Lord did it that He might sanctify the [p. 81] people with His own blood. He sets forth the path of sanctification for us. In His consideration for us, in His thoughts for us, He chooses to suffer in that way, outside the gate of Jerusalem. He was looking on to conditions such as we find at the present day; He knew what would come in, and He goes outside to suffer. God had no place in Israel; the death of Stephen proved that He had no place among them, and the Lord foresaw it, and He acted in view of it, and suffered without the gate, that the people might go outside to Him.
The atmosphere in the camp today is absolutely deadening; it is stifling to every spiritual instinct, and the Lord wants us outside; He died outside. There are conditions in the camp which are poisonous, and the Lord in His compassion for you would have you outside; outside with Him. The apostle calls upon us to go out to Him. “Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach”. (Hebrews 13:13) It cannot be anything but a condition of reproach in the eyes of the camp. Moses accepted the reproach, and more, he valued reproach; he had learnt to esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, for he saw what was invisible. Reproach is not only a duty if we consider for God, but it is treasure. The Spirit of God gives the name to what Moses accepted and appreciated, He calls it the “reproach of Christ”. The position involves the reproach of Christ, but that is treasure.
Well, the ark of the covenant must regulate everything, and the result is that we “go forth”. The apostle here says, “Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp”. It is “unto him”, as if the affections of the apostle were engaged with that One alone.
We might ask: How can we approach to God? What about the worship of God? How is it to be sustained? Is there not provision for the worship [p. 82] of God in the camp? No; the camp does not truly afford the conditions for the worship of God now, since Jesus has died outside the gate. He could say, “The hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father”. And again, “The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth”. (John 4:21,23) It is the sanctified ones, those separated from the world, who worship the Father today; and Christ is the measure of the sanctification. “For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified through the truth”. (John 17:19)
We need not fear, Christ is sufficient to maintain the worship of God; we have an altar. There has never yet been a time in the world when there was not an altar; the altar is the place of sacrifice. We are given an opportunity for sacrifice; that is the thought of an altar. There is a place where we can offer to God continually the sacrifice of praise, and where we can do good and communicate; these are sacrifices with which God is well pleased. It is well worth while, beloved friends, to please God; the great end in sacrifice is to please God. You might have very expensive things to offer, but the point is, do you seek to please God? The widow woman who cast two mites into the treasury was pleasing to God, for she cast in her all. So there is a place of sacrifice afforded to those who are apart from the camp, and their sacrifices are well-pleasing to God.
Now as to Exodus 20, the thought of blessing is intimately connected with the recognition of the Lord. The altar is alluded to, and it is to be made of earth. There is nothing very showy about it, it is not conspicuous, so that you do not assume anything. Then, a further thing, you are not to go up by steps to God’s altar, “that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon”. It is an awful thing to be [p. 83] discovered to be naked in connection with the things of God. To be naked is that your flesh is disclosed as acting in connection with God’s holy things. That is obnoxious to God; the altar would be polluted by man’s tool upon it, but I do not speak of that, but of the blessing that God brings in in connection with the place of His name. He says, “in all places where I shall make my name to be remembered I will come unto thee, and bless thee”. Where does He make His name to be remembered? In the hearts of His saints. We have to look at these thoughts spiritually, everything is spiritual in divine things. The absence of steps or of hewn stone must be taken up spiritually, and so here again, when it is a question of His remembrance, that also must be looked at spiritually, as setting forth the place He has in the affections of His saints.
Here it says, “in all places”; it is not here the thought of the one place to which all the males in Israel were to come three times in the year, but in all places where I record my name, “I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee”. What a comfort to us! What a provision for us! Even now we can come into this blessing; it is the great end that God has before Him with regard to us; He will come to us, and there He will bless us, “there will I bless thee”.
May the Lord bless His word to every one of us!