Inside or Outside
I have a habit of noticing repetition in scripture. For example, shortly after becoming a Christ follower in January of 1983, I started noticing the repeated phrase and concept, “in Christ,” where this thing is in Christ, that thing happens in Christ, or a certain blessing is found in Christ. So, I started keeping track of those references. You can download that list off my website if you like.
Outside the Camp
This week, another one stirred my curiosity. “Inside the camp,” and “outside the camp.”
On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain.
- Exodus 19:17, ESV
The Giving of the Law
The context of this statement is the exodus from 430 years of Egyptian slavery.¹ God freed the Hebrew people from their bondage and had been leading them to their new home in the promised land. At this point, they were camped near the foot of Mount Sinai on the Sinai peninsula.
The text above is the first of more than thirty references to events and encounters that occurred “outside the camp” as God, through Moses, led the Israelites through the wilderness. These are much more than mere geographical statements regarding camp-related positioning. These are statements and notifications of holiness! These are tangible manifestations of the relationship between the holy God and his unholy people.
In this first reference to “outside the camp,” we see the initial meeting between God and his people, and it was an exceedingly frightening experience. The people were camped by the mountain, just waiting. “Why are we here,” they must have been wondering. “What’s going to happen?”
On day three, flashes of lightning and roars of thunder began. A heavy, thick cloud descended upon the mountain, and the mountain itself began to quake. And then there was an ear-piercing blast of a trumpet that was so loud the people were trembling with fear. Holiness and unholiness were about to collide, and the Holy God was going to deliver his Law to the people.
The Tent
Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp, and 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.
- Exodus 33:7, ESV
The original tent of meeting was pitched outside the camp because the camp had been defiled through idolatry. In their impatience, the people of God fashioned the calf of gold and worshiped it.² In response, God said he would no longer dwell among the people — “…but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”³
Unclean Discharges
This may seem indelicate, but God addressed all manner of logistical matters in the Law. When members of the community needed to relieve themselves, God decreed that they were to take a digging implement and to undertake this task at a designated spot outside the camp, burying their refuse when they were done.⁴ When man had nocturnal emissions, he was considered defiled and required to go outside the camp to purify himself.⁵ All of this is, “Because the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp…therefore your camp must be holy.”⁶
Other “outside the camp” conditions include skin diseases,⁷ sacrificial ashes,⁸ sin offerings,⁹ execution of a blasphemer.¹⁰
The Final Sacrifice
As we saw during our recent Easter series, the sacrifice of Jesus, the Son of God, was something that had to take place outside the camp.¹¹ Jesus was crucified, as were all criminals, outside the city gates. Crucifixions were defilements, and as Jesus was taking on the sin of the entire world, his defilement was particularly potent.
Inside the Camp
The camp was the formation of concentric circles of holiness. At the center of the camp was the Tabernacle, and at the center of the Tabernacle was the Holy of Holies, and at the center of the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant.
The Tabernacle, specifically the Holy of Holies, was the dwelling place of God’s glory.¹² Surrounding the Tabernacle was the priestly tribe of Levi. Surrounding the Levites was the remaining tribes of Israel. Beyond that was outside the camp.
God’s Holiness
You can see the concentric circles of sanctity in how God structured the camp. Holiness is serious business with God. We dare not take it lightly! Even the Holy of Holies (Kodesh HaKodashim) was configured to exacting specifications, a perfect cube of 10 cubits by 10 cubits by 10 cubits. “Perfection” was at the center of the concentric circles of holiness, giving us a certain “spatial theology” where the physical structure of the Tabernacle and the camp surrounding it teaches us about the holiness of the God we serve.
Always, we find strict lines of demarcation between what is sacred and what is profane. Everything inside the camp was governed by Laws of both ritual and literal purity. Without this, the people of God could not coexist with the Holy of Holies and the God who dwelt there in his glory. The borders of the camp marked the dividing line between inclusion and rejection, acceptance and denial.
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If we were to take only one lesson from the entire Old Testament, that lesson must be that God is holy, and he calls his people to be holy. Please read and consider each of these verses. Resist the urge to read past them hastily.
For I am the LORD your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy … For I am the LORD who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.
- Leviticus 11:44a, 45 ESVAnd the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.’”
- Leviticus 19:2, ESVConsecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am the LORD your God. Keep my statutes and do them; I am the LORD who sanctifies you.
- Leviticus 20:7–8, ESVYou shall be holy to me, for I the LORD am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.
- Leviticus 20:26, ESVYou shall sanctify [the priestly son of Aaron], for he offers the bread of your God. He shall be holy to you, for I, the LORD, who sanctify you, am holy.
- Leviticus 21:8, ESV
New Testament — Same Call
As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
- 1 Peter 1:14–16, ESV
The Theological Bridge
While I can “geek out” at length on word and phrase studies like this, I know we need to answer the “so what” question. What is the message for us today. How do I use what I’m learning?
God’s Holiness and the Church
I believe it is vital that Christ-followers today transition the concept of the Tabernacle’s concentric circles of holiness into current-generation body life. You may see it differently but I am witnessing a significant loss of integrity in the church where acknowledging the holiness of God is concerned. God has become a plaything, a happiness vending machine, a carnival character in a church circus.
As God’s people were led through the wilderness of Sinai, distinction between what is holy and what is defiled was a matter of life and death. For the Church, the “camp” is not a geographical location. It is the community of believers, one that needs to understand and revere the absolute holiness of the God we serve.
At the Center
In the Tabernacle structure, the closer one got to the center, the more refined the materials became, starting with bronze, transitioning to silver, and then finally gold. As a believer, this suggests that the holiest place within me and you is our core, the center, often referred to as “the heart.”
Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.
- Proverbs 4:23, NIV-1978
We must hold our hearts and minds to the highest standards of integrity, purity, holiness, and reverence. Accountability begins with my core, and accountability with the body of Christ begins with the core of the body as well.
The Tension
The boundary of the camp delineated what was holy and what was unclean. The body of Christ is “called out” of the world into a holy community, therefore uncleanness is not to be tolerated in the body. But we dare not read that as a call to be an isolated community. Where the Tabernacle was designed to keep unclean things out, the church’s mandate is to draw unclean things in that they might become clean.
A holy church is not one that hides from the unholy world but, rather, one that is so distinct in its conduct that the difference is both obvious and compelling. We are the light of the dark world, the salt of the bland earth.¹³ Holiness for the body of Christ today is our counter-cultural identity. The reason “those sitting in the darkness have seen a great light,”¹⁴ is because those of us with that light have boldly taken the light to them.
The Ark
The presence of God was known to dwell with the Ark of the Covenant. Today, the presence of God dwells within the body of Christ through the indwelling Spirit that Jesus sent.¹⁵ That is the center of the camp, the holiest place.
Outside the Camp Once Again
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.
- Hebrews 13:12–13, ESV
At the beginning of this post, the people of God went outside the camp to meet with God and hear his Law. Now we go “outside the camp” to bear reproach with Jesus. There is not universal agreement on what this “outside the camp” phrase means, but I find it significant that we started meeting God outside the camp at Sinai, and we meet Jesus now, outside the camp as we bear reproach with him.
Blessings upon you, my friends.
Victoriously in Christ!
- damon
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1. Exodus 12:40
2. Exodus 32
3. Exodus 33:3
4. Deuteronomy 23:12–13
5. Deuteronomy 23:10
6. Deuteronomy 23:14
7. Leviticus 13:46
8. Leviticus 6:11, Hebrews 13:11
9. Leviticus 4:12
10. Leviticus 24:14
11. Hebrews 13:12, John 19:17, Matthew 27:33, Mark 15:22
12. Exodus 40:34–35, Exodus 25,22, Leviticus 16:2, 1 Kings 8:10–11, 2 Chronicles 5;13
13. Matthew 5:13–14
14. Matthew 4:16
15. John 15:26
