With Christ Outside the Camp

Pastoral Prayer:

Praise & Admiration of God:

The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and fourth generation.

Government Leaders:

Chief David Birk of Middletown, Ohio

Praises and Struggles of Congregation (think through people in Aud) careful not to be too MCS heavy:

Benson, Seibert, Pasquel, Burton Families

Other Churches:

Dustin Battles and Mercy Baptist Church - West Chester, Ohio

Older couple in church who are upset

Emotionally tired

Sanctification of Congregation:

To be worshippers who are fighting sin.

To be holy as you are holy

For our parents

Those Taking Gospel Around World:

Turkey

Jake Taube Family

Tom Depew Family

The Lost:

Buryat People

Those in our midst.

Hebrews 13:13 “Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.”

main point of the sermon?

Let’s follow Jesus outside the camp! (Hebrews 13:13)

I don’t think we fully understand what this means. In order to understand what this means, we must understand what it means to be outside the camp in ancient Israel, and Leviticus 12-15 gives us a little glimpse of what it meant to be thrust outside the camp of Israel.

These passages are about cleanliness laws regarding post-child birth, skin diseases, and bodily discharges. In all cases, people had to be cleansed in order to be able to worship God in holiness. Sometimes this cleansing involved merely a washing with water. In some cases, there were sacrifices and periods of quarantine.

In the most extreme cases, the most unclean would have to endure social isolation outside the camp of Israel.

Illustration: Imagine you lost the person you loved the most, you lost all of your children, you were not able to be with anyone to comfort you in that loss, your property was seized, and you were shipped off to a place that reminded you little more than a prison camp. No on buys a one way ticket to “outside the camp”.

So, when I say something like, “Let’s follow Jesus outside the camp, you should probably be thinking that something is not adding up. I am asking you to do something that biblically appears to be the opposite of what we should want to do. Inside the camp is the presence of God. Outside the camp is the absence of God. Inside the camp is the realm of life. Outside the camp is the realm of death. Let’s resolve this tension that the Hebrews writer posits.

Title: With Christ Outside the Camp

Text: Leviticus 12-15

Series: Life in the Presence of God

(1) What is the passage saying?

(i) There is uncleanness after giving birth (Leviticus 12:2-7) - no wholeness, do not pass go!

Impurity in one sense is incompleteness.

Separation is required

Difference for birthing girls (Leviticus 12:5) - Paul Copan “Is God a Moral Monster”

App: Don’t believe the lie that your value is staked in what you say about you, others say about you…etc

Atonement is required (Leviticus 12:6-7)

(ii) There is uncleanness & separation due to skin diseases (Leviticus 13-14)

21 different cases of skin diseases (Leviticus 13:1-3)

Skin diseases must be diagnosed, acknowledged, and judged (v. 3).

Psoriasis - white flaky skin (13:3)

Favus - scalp (13:29)

Leucoderma - a discoloring of the skin; not below surface of the skin

App: This was not self-diagnosed though it is self-recognized.

Who is allowed to point out your sin?

Quarantine outside the camp is required (Leviticus 13:45-46)

Symbolic of sin.

A posture of mourning and warning is required

App: Sin is not to be celebrated but to be mourned.

What would you warn others about with regards to yourself?

Outside the Camp

It is a re-enacting of Eden.

It is a separation from covenant-blessing.

It is a type of banishment to the realm of death.

It is to experience a living death.

It is to be cut off from divine grace and divine community.

It is to fall short of the glory of God.

Atonement is required (Leviticus 14:18)

Cleansing ritual and sacrifices are required (Leviticus 14:1-8, 10-18)

(iii) There is uncleanness due to bodily discharges (Leviticus 15)

Purification is required (Leviticus 15:13-15)

Separation is required

Indirect contamination is possible (Leviticus 15:25-27)

Atonement is required (Leviticus 15:30)

Summary:

The passage is saying that in all cases of impurity, a period of isolation, waiting, or banishment is required. God requires perfect worshippers.

How serious do you take purity in your life of worship? Not just in congregational worship…do you worship God when you eat, work, play? You are always worshipping and you cannot worship sin, yourself and God at the same time.

personal sin must be identified and appropriately dealt with by the worshippers

In traveling to China, pre-Covid, we walked through scanners after arriving in country. I noticed that some people were getting stopped and tended to after they walked through the scanners. I later found out that the scanners were sensing the body temperature of the individuals to see if there were elevated temperatures that needed to be addressed, so that they did not contaminate others in the country. These laws were designed to assess the purity/impurity of the individuals to see if they could have access and/or remain in the congregation. Some situations required more action than others. If your body temperature is up because you have been sleeping under a hot blanket for several hours on a plane, that is different than if you have an infection and your body temperature is elevated. Either way, the cause of the problem has to be addressed if you want to move forward. Remember, that sin must be dealt with no matter how deeply rooted it is or is not.

(2) What does the passage mean?

(i) If holiness is viewed as wholeness: any time someone has a skin disease or deformity, they are not whole and not allowed to continue in usual worship in God’s presence.

(ii) If the life of the flesh is in the blood, and there is a discharge of blood or life-producing bodily fluids there is a lack of wholeness that makes the person not whole.

(iii) If outside the camp is the furthest place away from the presence of God, then that is the place where a person is cut off -- no covenant blessing.

Summary:

What these laws teach us is:

(1) These diseases and discharges symbolize sin. Sin always keeps us from what we were created to be and do -- worship in God’s holy presence. Psalm 15:1-5.

(2) Sin isolates us from God until there is cleansing & atonement.

Sin isolates us from God until there is cleansing/atonement?

The double entry into my office can offer a double kind of locking out. Years ago, I was able to get all the way into my office early in the morning, but then I stepped out and did not realize that I locked the door that immediately opens into my office. I had left everything inside of the the office, including keys. Consequently, I was not locked out of the building, but I was locked out of the place where I needed to be. On other occasions I have been locked out of the building.

Worshippers have two extreme options: live in the camp as a holy worshipper or be cut off outside the camp. No one in their right mind chooses to go outside the camp. Yet, this is what the NT writer of Hebrews is telling the Christians to do.

So, we have to ask, “What does Jesus have to do with people who were on the outside of the camp?”

(3) How does the passage point us to Jesus?

(i) Jesus’ revealed unparalleled power and purity. Mark 1:45; Mark 5:25.

In these two instances, we see that Jesus physically engages with two banished individuals. In this Jesus is doing what no OT priest could do. They could not touch. They could not heal. Jesus shows that the purity He is cleansing He is offering is so powerful that it cannot be contaminated by sin.

It is a kind of wholeness that they have never experienced.

You could say that Jesus does for the outsiders what the law, the sacrifices, and the OT priests could NOT do.

(ii) Jesus suffered outside the camp. Mark 15:20-22;28; Hebrews 13:11-12.

What is it exactly that this purifying Person did? He was led out of the city of Jerusalem to the place of execution where he took his place among the banished outside the camp.

The Son of God left the presence of God to go outside the camp to atone for outsiders - to make them holy worshippers who have access to the presence of God.

Our skin diseases, bodily discharges -- Christ dealt our sin by his blood. In Christ we are truly complete.

(iii) Jesus decentralized worship.

If you were to ask a Jewish person, “Hey! Where do we go to worship? or “Where do we find God...?” Answer: “In Jerusalem. In the Temple. Inside the Camp.”

If you were to ask a Christian, “Hey! Where do we go to worship?” “Where do we find God?” Answer: You never stop worshipping. We worship “in the camp” and we worship “outside the camp”. We worship congregationally and personally. We find God in Jesus Christ.

(iv) Jesus called new insiders to the outside.

Jesus is the insider, who became the outsider, to make outsiders to become insiders who are now to follow Him to the outside. Wherever Jesus is, that’s the inside! Wherever Jesus is not, that’s the outside.

Illustration: What makes the house meaningful is not the stuff, but the people. Let me be with my wife on an island rather than in a house by myself.

(4) What must I believe/do because of Jesus?

Worship Jesus for His purity and perfection.

Trust in Jesus’ blood as what cleanses us from our sinful deformities.

Your outside condition can only be healed by Jesus christ.

Find your completion in Christ and not in anyone or anything else.

If you’ve been saved by Jesus, be willing to suffer disgrace because of Jesus.

The disgrace of accusations of social narrowness/bigotry...etc

Outside the camp with Jesus is better than inside the camp without Him.

Outside the camp with Jesus in holiness is better than inside the camp without Him in unholiness.

Outside the camp with Jesus in sexual purity is better than inside the camp without Jesus in impurity.

Jesus has completely changed what it looks like to be outside the camp.

In Genesis, we see God in the Garden; but in Jesus we see God going outside of the Garden.

Before, to be outside the camp meant that you were suffering isolation for your sin. Now, to go outside the camp is to be suffering for the name of Jesus.

Before, to go outside the camp was to be cut off from divine grace. Now, it is divine grace that empowers us to go outside the camp.

Before, to go outside the camp meant to be in the realm of the dead. Now, we have a life that can never be taken away.

Before, to go outside the camp meant something was wrong with you. Now, to go outside the camp is because you’ve been made right with God.

Before, to go outside the camp meant that your message was “Unclean! Unclean!” Now, to follow Jesus outside the camp is to declare your message, “Complete in Christ!”.

You see, to be outside the camp now is to be in Jesus, with Jesus. The real outsiders are those who are outside of Jesus Christ.

Show how something that previously was bad has now been made good:

Romania/Hungary Mission’s Trips - The Gipsy People were outsiders literally but when someone followed Jesus outside the camp, the name of Jesus turned outsiders into insiders. Now, where there was the realm of death, there is the realm of life.

Jesus went outside the camp for you on the Cross. Will you go outside the camp with Jesus?