Hebrews 13:7-25 Living in Community (Part 2)

This morning, with our look at the last half of Hebrews 13, we come to the end of our nearly six-month study of the letter of Hebrews. Throughout this series we have seen that our author has focussed on the greatness of Jesus Christ as: God, Son of God, and the creator of all things.

He has shown us the greatness of his sacrifice, and how, being a once for all time sacrifice, what Jesus did for us on the cross is infinitely better than the sacrifices in the temple because Jesus has brought us eternal forgiveness, eternal cleansing, and eternal salvation.

Our author has also spoken about Christ's eternal priesthood. He showed how human priests can ultimately, do nothing for us because they are sinful and because they die. However, because Jesus is sinless, and because through his resurrection from the dead Jesus lives forever at the right hand of God the Father, Jesus is making eternal intercession for us.

Then, having established all of this, in this last chapter and a half, our author challenges us to live faithfully for Christ, and he challenges us to live faithfully as a community of believers.

Here in his closing comments he covers several things which we will look at only briefly, as they pretty much speak for themselves.

We have seen throughout this letter that the sacrifice of bulls, goats, and sheep have no value for the believer. They cannot bring forgiveness. They cannot bring cleansing form sin. They cannot make a person right with God, nor can they bring a person closer to God, and yet, our author does show us here that there is a "true sacrifice" for the believer. A sacrifice that comes, not from dead animals, but is instead the result of what we say, and how we live. Hebrews 13:15 says:

Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name.

Singing, speaking, proclaiming the praises of God, or, as he also puts it here: "the confession of his name", that is the type of sacrifice that pleases God, for these things are an acknowledgement from us about God's greatness. They are an acknowledgement from us that we are trusting God, and relying upon God, no matter what our external circumstances happen to be, and out of that faith and trust we offer to him a sacrifice of praise. We offer to God a life of "thankfulness".

Psalm 34:1:

I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.

Psalm 71:23a:

My lips will shout for joy when I sing praises to you.

Psalm 119:171a:

My lips will pour forth praise.

A "sacrifice of praise".

The other sacrifice he talks about here is one of "good deeds", of doing good to others. Hebrews 13:16 says:

Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

In other words, he is talking about living a life of faith which shows itself in praise, and living a life of works which shows itself in doing good to others. These are sacrifices which bring glory and honour to God.

In Philippians 4:18 Paul also talks about how "sharing with others", how doing good to those around us, is a "sacrifice" to God:

I have been paid in full and have more than enough; I am fully satisfied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God.

To simply come to church and sing "praise songs" about how good God is to me, without a life that shows praise through its love for others by doing good to others, is empty, as James said in James 2:18:

Someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.

Our lives, not just our words, are the expression of our faith; and our lives, not just our words, are our daily sacrifice to God. Our daily gift to God.

The second thing that he talks to them about is their relationship to their leaders. He says in Hebrews 13:17:

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls and will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with sighing—for that would be harmful to you.

Now this first word, "obey", can be a difficult one for us, because it often has the idea of one person ordering around, bossing around, another. But this Greek word doesn't have the sense of being ordered about by the pastor. Neither does it have the sense of the pastor being "the boss" telling everybody what to do and people automatically having to follow orders, for the word that is translated as "obey" in just about every English translation, does not have the idea of "obedience", as "I tell you what to do", but of "being persuaded by".[1] Being taught by. Being guided by, and as a result of this persuasion, teaching and guidance, you follow, you obey, the individual.

This "obedience" is not a blind "do as I tell you to do, or else" kind of thing, but it means that through the words and deeds of the leaders of the church; through their teaching, personal conduct, and holiness as they speak and share the teachings of Jesus, the people are convinced, they are persuaded by the teachings of Jesus, and as a result, they live according to the teachings and Gospel of Jesus. This is an obedience that comes not because one "has to", but because one has been "persuaded to" through the sound teaching and character of those in leadership.

The second thing that he says in Hebrews 13:17 is of their need to "submit". This particular Greek word occurs only here in the entire New Testament,[2] and it means to "yield to someone's authority”.

Think about what has been happening in the church in Hebrews. This group of believers had separated themselves off from the leaders of the church. They had rejected the position and authority of the church's leaders. They had resisted and rejected the teaching of the church's leaders, and they had separated themselves from the church as a whole.

In other words, they had set themselves in opposition to the church leaders in every way, and so they were told, in relation to the church leaders, they were told to obey. That is, to allow themselves to be persuaded by the truth of the Gospel that they were being taught, and they were to stop rejecting the truth. The same truth that our author has just spent twelve and a half chapters telling them, and part of that "being persuaded" meant that they were to "submit", to stop living rebellious lives. To stop shutting themselves off from the leadership and from the rest of the church.

The third thing that he talks about is the need for ongoing prayer, and these prayers were to be aimed at two things.

Firstly, they were to pray for the work of the Gospel, as in Hebrews 13:18:

Pray for us; we are sure that we have a clear conscience, desiring to act honourably in all things.

Paul said in Ephesians 6:19:

Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel,

Again in 2 Corinthians 1:10-11:

He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again, as you also join in helping us by your prayers, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.

Then, in addition to praying for the work, they were to pray for the restoration of the author. He says in Hebrews 13:19:

I urge you all the more to do this, so that I may be restored to you very soon.

It appears that our author was either in jail, or under duress, or facing great trials himself, and so he asks them to pray for him that he might be "restored" to them. That he might be delivered from the trial he was facing, so that he might rejoin them and continue his work among them. Paul asks for the same things in Philemon 1:22:

Prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping through your prayers to be restored to you.

In the mystery of God, for the work to succeed, we need to pray.

So far we have seen in Hebrews 13 what is necessary for us as believers as we live in community:

Sacrifice, not only in praise but in good works.
Obedience and submission to the leaders of the church.
And prayer.

Three things that are necessary for us as we seek to live as believers in community with one another.

Although these three are important, I want us now to think about what our author says in Hebrews 13:9-14, a passage which sets the stage for this talk on true sacrifice, obedience and submission to their leaders, and ongoing prayer. Hebrews 13:9-14 says:

Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings; for it is well for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by regulations about food, which have not benefited those who observe them.

And here he is probably referring to Jewish dietary laws.

We have an altar from which those who officiate in the tent have no right to eat. For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood.

Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

In this passage, our author refers to two particular events that occurred in the Old Testament. First of all, he refers to the sacrifice that was made on the Day of Atonement, when the “sin offering", or the "purification offering" was presented in the tabernacle for the people.

Leviticus 16:27 says:

The bull of the sin offering and the goat of the sin offering, whose blood was brought in to make atonement in the holy place, shall be taken outside the camp; their skin and their flesh and their dung shall be consumed in fire.

Which is exactly what he is talking about in verse eleven:

For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp.

In the sacrificial system, the blood of this particular sacrifice was presented before God, but the carcass of the animal was not burned on the altar, but "outside the camp".

Then, just as he emphasises the fact that the body of the animal was "disposed of" outside the camp, so also, we are to "leave the camp", to go "outside the camp", and bear the same disgrace that Jesus bore.

But this idea of going "outside the camp" also refers to an incident found in Exodus 33:7 which says:

Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp; he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the LORD would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp.

Just prior to this incident in Exodus 33 Moses goes up onto Mount Sinai. He receives the tablets containing the commands of God, and he is given rules and instructions for building the tabernacle. But while he is on the mountain, the people get restless. They think that Moses has abandoned them and so they come to Aaron, who takes their gold earrings and fashions a calf idol made out of gold, which they then begin to worship. God tells Moses what is going on, Moses comes down the mountain, breaks the tablets, destroys the idol, and rebukes the people.

We then read in Exodus 33:7:

Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp; he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the LORD would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp.

Most English translations follow the New Revised Standard when they say, "Moses used to take a tent",[3] which implies that Moses' actions had absolutely nothing to do with what had just happened.

However, in the Septuagint, which our author uses, this old Greek translation makes it clear that after the event of the golden calf, Moses, abandoned the camp, and took his own tent to live "outside the camp".[4] That is, his actions were in direct response to the people abandoning God and worshipping the golden calf. But notice where he took his tent. "Outside the camp"! Separating himself from those who had rejected God.[5]

Let us stop for a second, for someone might object:

Why do we care about what the Greek translation says when the Hebrew says something different?

The answer to that question is because the Greek is the only Bible that this man knew, it is the Bible from which he gained his understanding of the will and ways of God, and it is the Bible that he bases his entire argument on. This is why I am focussing on what this Greek translation said rather than the Hebrew itself.[6]

Let's realise what is happening here in Exodus. When the people rejected God. When they turned from God. When they said "no!" to God, Moses took his own personal tent, went outside the camp, and in his own personal tent outside the camp, he met with God.

Further, we notice in Exodus 33:7 that anyone who wanted to meet with God also had to go "outside the camp". They had to leave the camp and go to the tent Moses had set up.

They had to leave the idolatry, the compromise, the false teaching, the immorality, and they needed to go "outside the camp" in order to "meet with God".

This is what the writer of Hebrews says we are to do as well. But why did he say this? What were these Jewish Christians to leave?

As we have seen, this group of Jewish Christians were trying to have a foot in both camps.

They wanted to be followers of Christ, but they also wanted to be followers of the law.
They wanted to trust in the sacrifice of Christ, but they also wanted to trust in the sacrifices of the temple.
They wanted Jesus as their "great high priest", while at the same time wanting a high priest in the temple in Jerusalem.

They wanted a foot in both camps. To hedge their bets. To be a bit of "both". But he tells them here that they need to "make up their minds". They need to leave behind their religious past in Judaism, a Judaism which had rejected Jesus as the son of God and the saviour of the world, and they needed instead to take a step of faith, and to go to Jesus "outside the camp".

Like ancient Israel they were being 'torn between two opinions", and so Elijah said to the people on Mount Carmel:

How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.[7]

Jesus said in Matthew 6:24:

No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other.

Jesus then goes on to tell us to abandon the love of money, with all of the worries that it brings, and to seek God. To go "outside the camp" of materialism, and to seek God above all else.

John said in 1 John 2:15-17:

Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever.

Elijah, John, and Jesus each tell us that we cannot have a foot in both camps. They each tell us what the writer of Hebrews tells us, to take our tent, to take our lives and our affections, and to go "outside the camp", for it is "outside the camp" that we will meet with Jesus.

He tells us that when we go outside the camp. When we leave sin, and rebellion behind. When we leave unbelief and compromise behind. When we go outside the camp, that is when we are able to meet with Jesus.

The way that the Greek translation that our author used puts it, Moses did not meet with God inside the camp. When the people rejected God, he had to go "outside the camp" in order to meet with God. The people did not meet with God "inside the camp". They had to go "outside the camp" to where Moses was in order to meet with God.

So also, we need to decide whether our goal, our longing, and our desire is going to be within a rebellious camp. A camp that rejects God and what he stands for, or whether our goal, our longing and our desire is going to be Christ, outside the camp.

Yes, it will mean "bearing disgrace", rejection, and mocking, but they had already borne that. Hebrews 10:32-33 says:

Recall those earlier days when, after you had been enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to abuse and persecution, and sometimes being partners with those so treated.

They had already experienced "disgrace for Christ", although it is clear that they were contemplating a change of mind. But in Hebrews 11:25-26 bearing disgrace was the example of Moses:

[Moses chose] to share ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered abuse suffered for the Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to the reward.

When Moses chose to be with his people Israel, he was saying to the Egyptians:

I choose God, the ways of God, the will of God, the purposes of God, and fellowship with God, above everything else.

Later on when Moses chose to take his tent and leave rebellious and unbelieving Israel, he was saying the exact same thing, and so he took his tent "outside the camp", to be with God.

In Hebrews 13:13 this group of Christians were being made to realise that they must also choose. Not as a "once off", but as a daily, ongoing decision. Not when it was easy, but when it was hard. Not when it cost them nothing, but when it might cost them everything, as it once had. Choosing to be with Christ.

This has been the theme throughout Hebrews. The focus has always been on coming to Jesus. Hebrews 4:14 says:

Since then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession.

And Hebrews 10:19, 22-23:

Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus . . . let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.

And Hebrews 12:2:

[Look] to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

Or Mark 8:34-37:

[Jesus] called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.

For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?

When a rich young man asked Jesus what he needed to do to gain eternal life:

Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”[8]

This specific act is something that probably none of us will need to do. However, and this is what is important, here was a man who was compelled to make a choice. To "stay in the camp", or to go "outside the camp". To continue as he was, with his old habits, ideals, desires, beliefs, and practices, or to change, and to follow Jesus, no matter what, and no matter where.

We make this choice to "go outside the camp", we make this choice to "go to Jesus", because we realise that there is more to life than simply the pleasures and distractions of this world. As Hebrews 13:14 says:

For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

In other words, have our minds, our hearts, and our affections on the goal. Then, having our heart on the goal, we are able to leave behind that which is not beneficial, leaving behind those things that trip us up, and we are able to follow God faithfully, wherever he happens to lead us.

Hebrews 11:10 says:

He looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

Hebrews 11:15-16 says:

If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.

Why else do you think he says in Hebrews 12:1-2:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

What are you looking forward to? What are you longing for?

Jesus said in Matthew 24:35:

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

John says in 1 John 2:17:

The world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever.

If it all passes away, where are our affections and desires going to be?

2 Corinthians 5:17 says:

If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!

If the old has passed away and everything is now new, what is our behaviour and lifestyles to be like?

Nothing in this life lasts, it all 'passes away', this then demands a change in our priorities.

Jesus said in John 6:27a:

Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.

And, again, 1 John 2:17:

The world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever.

What are we working for? What do we desire? Are we doing God's will, or our own?

In Hebrews we find a people who tried to have a foot in both camps, but they couldn't, and neither can we. They couldn't stay in Judaism with its dependence on law, priests, and animal sacrifice and be a follower of Jesus as well. They, and we, have to "go outside the camp", and they, and we, have to "come to Jesus".

It is that choice, leaving everything for Jesus, that then enables us to offer a sacrifice of praise, and a sacrifice of good works.

It is that choice to follow Jesus that enables us to be persuaded by the truth that church leaders proclaim.

It is that choice to follow Jesus that will enable us to come to God in prayer for one another.

We are a community of believers in Jesus Christ. But it is only as we "come to Jesus", leaving everything else behind, that we are enabled to live in community. To live together as brothers and sisters in Christ and bring glory to God in our fellowship and in our lives.

But only as we go "outside the camp" of this world, so that we might meet with Jesus.

[1] πείθομαι in the passive

[2] ὑπείκω

[3] GKC 107e

[4] The LXX translates יִקַּ֨ח with the participle λαβὼν.

[5] The King James and New King James translate this as, “and Moses took a tent”, reading the imperfect יִקַּ֨ח as a perfect.

[6] We find a similar situation with the King James translation of John 14:2, “In my father’s house are many mansions”, a word which in 1611 could mean either the large house of the landowner, or the small room of the working man. However, by the nineteenth century the meaning had changed to only the “large house”, and thus we have songs such as “Everybody’s going to have a mansion in glory” or “Mansion over the hilltop”, with the idea that every Christian receives the very large house. This understanding, although wrong, was based on the Bible that they had, and the meaning of the word in their own context. The same is true with our author here.

[7] 1 Kings 18:21

[8] Matthew 19:21

Hebrews 13:7-25 Living in Community (Part 2)

This morning, with our look at the last half of Hebrews 13, we come to the end of our nearly six-month study of the letter of Hebrews. Throughout this series we have seen that our author has focussed on the greatness of Jesus Christ as: God, Son of God, and the creator of all things.

He has shown us the greatness of his sacrifice, and how, being a once for all time sacrifice, what Jesus did for us on the cross is infinitely better than the sacrifices in the temple because Jesus has brought us eternal forgiveness, eternal cleansing, and eternal salvation.

Then, having established all of this, in this last chapter and a half, our author challenges us to live faithfully for Christ, and he challenges us to live faithfully as a community of believers.

Here in his closing comments he covers several things which we will look at only briefly, as they pretty much speak for themselves.

Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name.

Psalm 34:1:

I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.

Psalm 71:23a:

My lips will shout for joy when I sing praises to you.

Psalm 119:171a:

My lips will pour forth praise.

A "sacrifice of praise".

The other sacrifice he talks about here is one of "good deeds", of doing good to others. Hebrews 13:16 says:

Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

In other words, he is talking about living a life of faith which shows itself in praise, and living a life of works which shows itself in doing good to others. These are sacrifices which bring glory and honour to God.

In Philippians 4:18 Paul also talks about how "sharing with others", how doing good to those around us, is a "sacrifice" to God:

I have been paid in full and have more than enough; I am fully satisfied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God.

To simply come to church and sing "praise songs" about how good God is to me, without a life that shows praise through its love for others by doing good to others, is empty, as James said in James 2:18:

Someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.

Our lives, not just our words, are the expression of our faith; and our lives, not just our words, are our daily sacrifice to God. Our daily gift to God.

The second thing that he talks to them about is their relationship to their leaders. He says in Hebrews 13:17:

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls and will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with sighing—for that would be harmful to you.

The second thing that he says in Hebrews 13:17 is of their need to "submit". This particular Greek word occurs only here in the entire New Testament,[2] and it means to "yield to someone's authority”.

The third thing that he talks about is the need for ongoing prayer, and these prayers were to be aimed at two things.

Firstly, they were to pray for the work of the Gospel, as in Hebrews 13:18:

Pray for us; we are sure that we have a clear conscience, desiring to act honourably in all things.

Paul said in Ephesians 6:19:

Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel,

Again in 2 Corinthians 1:10-11:

He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again, as you also join in helping us by your prayers, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.

Then, in addition to praying for the work, they were to pray for the restoration of the author. He says in Hebrews 13:19:

I urge you all the more to do this, so that I may be restored to you very soon.

Prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping through your prayers to be restored to you.

In the mystery of God, for the work to succeed, we need to pray.

So far we have seen in Hebrews 13 what is necessary for us as believers as we live in community:

Sacrifice, not only in praise but in good works.

Obedience and submission to the leaders of the church.

And prayer.

Three things that are necessary for us as we seek to live as believers in community with one another.

Although these three are important, I want us now to think about what our author says in Hebrews 13:9-14, a passage which sets the stage for this talk on true sacrifice, obedience and submission to their leaders, and ongoing prayer. Hebrews 13:9-14 says:

Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings; for it is well for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by regulations about food, which have not benefited those who observe them.

And here he is probably referring to Jewish dietary laws.

Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

In this passage, our author refers to two particular events that occurred in the Old Testament. First of all, he refers to the sacrifice that was made on the Day of Atonement, when the “sin offering", or the "purification offering" was presented in the tabernacle for the people.

Leviticus 16:27 says:

The bull of the sin offering and the goat of the sin offering, whose blood was brought in to make atonement in the holy place, shall be taken outside the camp; their skin and their flesh and their dung shall be consumed in fire.

Which is exactly what he is talking about in verse eleven:

For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp.

In the sacrificial system, the blood of this particular sacrifice was presented before God, but the carcass of the animal was not burned on the altar, but "outside the camp".

Then, just as he emphasises the fact that the body of the animal was "disposed of" outside the camp, so also, we are to "leave the camp", to go "outside the camp", and bear the same disgrace that Jesus bore.

But this idea of going "outside the camp" also refers to an incident found in Exodus 33:7 which says:

Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp; he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the LORD would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp.

We then read in Exodus 33:7:

Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp; he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the LORD would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp.

Most English translations follow the New Revised Standard when they say, "Moses used to take a tent",[3] which implies that Moses' actions had absolutely nothing to do with what had just happened.

Let us stop for a second, for someone might object:

Why do we care about what the Greek translation says when the Hebrew says something different?

Let's realise what is happening here in Exodus. When the people rejected God. When they turned from God. When they said "no!" to God, Moses took his own personal tent, went outside the camp, and in his own personal tent outside the camp, he met with God.

Further, we notice in Exodus 33:7 that anyone who wanted to meet with God also had to go "outside the camp". They had to leave the camp and go to the tent Moses had set up.

They had to leave the idolatry, the compromise, the false teaching, the immorality, and they needed to go "outside the camp" in order to "meet with God".

This is what the writer of Hebrews says we are to do as well. But why did he say this? What were these Jewish Christians to leave?

As we have seen, this group of Jewish Christians were trying to have a foot in both camps.

They wanted to be followers of Christ, but they also wanted to be followers of the law.

They wanted to trust in the sacrifice of Christ, but they also wanted to trust in the sacrifices of the temple.

They wanted Jesus as their "great high priest", while at the same time wanting a high priest in the temple in Jerusalem.

Like ancient Israel they were being 'torn between two opinions", and so Elijah said to the people on Mount Carmel:

How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.[7]

Jesus said in Matthew 6:24:

No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other.

Jesus then goes on to tell us to abandon the love of money, with all of the worries that it brings, and to seek God. To go "outside the camp" of materialism, and to seek God above all else.

John said in 1 John 2:15-17:

Elijah, John, and Jesus each tell us that we cannot have a foot in both camps. They each tell us what the writer of Hebrews tells us, to take our tent, to take our lives and our affections, and to go "outside the camp", for it is "outside the camp" that we will meet with Jesus.

He tells us that when we go outside the camp. When we leave sin, and rebellion behind. When we leave unbelief and compromise behind. When we go outside the camp, that is when we are able to meet with Jesus.

So also, we need to decide whether our goal, our longing, and our desire is going to be within a rebellious camp. A camp that rejects God and what he stands for, or whether our goal, our longing and our desire is going to be Christ, outside the camp.

Yes, it will mean "bearing disgrace", rejection, and mocking, but they had already borne that. Hebrews 10:32-33 says:

Recall those earlier days when, after you had been enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to abuse and persecution, and sometimes being partners with those so treated.

They had already experienced "disgrace for Christ", although it is clear that they were contemplating a change of mind. But in Hebrews 11:25-26 bearing disgrace was the example of Moses:

[Moses chose] to share ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered abuse suffered for the Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to the reward.

When Moses chose to be with his people Israel, he was saying to the Egyptians: