It’s a joy and a privilege to be able to bring you the preaching of the Word this morning. And to that end, I would ask if you would please open your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 13. We’ll be looking at chapter 13, verses 7 through 17. Hebrews chapter 13, and we’ll begin reading in verse 7. We’ll read the Word and then we’ll offer a brief word of prayer and then we’ll get into the message.
So Hebrews chapter 13, beginning in verse 7. Let’s give attention to the reading of God’s Word:
“Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them. We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat. For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. 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. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.
Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.”
May God add His blessing to this reading from His holy and inspired Word. Let’s bow together in a brief word of prayer. Let us pray.
Father God, we are grateful for Your Word and we pray that You would grant unto us eyes to see and ears to hear, that You would glorify Yourself in Your midst, and that You would see, by the power of Your Spirit, much fruit to come about in our lives, to Your glory and praise. We pray and ask all of these things in Christ’s name, amen.
It’s the well-known author, C.S. Lewis, who once wrote, I think perhaps one of his more important essays entitled, “The Inner Ring.” And this essay, the inner ring, is all about those little elite circles that we find in the various places in life – whether it’s in politics, whether it’s in school, whether it’s in the government or in our communities – that these are the groups of people that are influential. We can say that they are the movers and the shakers. These are the people that make the decisions. They are the ones who have the sway. And so naturally, I think for many people, there is a desire to want to be a part of that inner circle. We want to be with those movers and shakers. We want to have a say. That’s understandable.
But at the same time, for many of these “inner rings”, for these inner circles, there can often be a high price to pay. In other words, they say, “Okay, we’ll let you in, but in letting you in there is a price. And that price is, you need to look the other way. We may ask you at your job, ‘Just move a couple of numbers over into this side of the ledger, just a couple of numbers,’ and you’re in.” Or it may be that you are in school, and I was recently reading an article in the news about an instance where a student had observed a crime. And the school authorities brought that student into the office of one of the deans and said, “We want you to say that the crime didn’t happen. And if you say that the crime didn’t happen, you’ll get to stay.” The student said, “No. I have to tell the truth.” And so the student lost his scholarship. He said, “No,” to the inner ring. He said, “No,” to the inner circle. So often it’s the case that you can be a part of that inner circle if you only are willing to look the other way, pay the price.
I was once recently reading a book about an elite military unit where one of the members of this military unit was accused of murdering a prisoner of war, a POW. And what this particular unit instilled in all of the members of their unit was loyalty to the unit at all costs. Loyalty to the unit at the cost of truth. Loyalty to the unit at the cost of your commitment to your faith. Loyalty to the unit over family, over country. Loyalty to the unit at all costs. And those that came forward paid a heavy price. They were ridiculed. Their reputations were dragged through the mud. They were accused of all sorts of false things all because they decided to side with the truth. There’s that inner ring and there’s the lure, there’s the draw.
Well this is something, I think, of what we have here in the thirteenth chapter as the author of Hebrews is bringing things to a close in an epistle, in a letter that he wrote to Jewish Christians, that is, Jews who converted to Christianity, who began to face the fires of persecution for their faith in Christ. And because of their faith in Christ, naturally they were looking for the door to the way out. They wanted to end the persecution. They were losing their homes. They were losing their property. They were being imprisoned and perhaps even some of them were paying the price with their life. And so they perhaps saw the lure of the inner ring. “If we only say and do the things that we used to do in Judaism, we can extinguish the fires of persecution. All we have to do is turn away from Christ, go back to what we knew, we could be a part of the inner ring, the floodwaters of persecution will cease, and then things will be fine.” Except what the author of Hebrews is warning them is, the flood waters of persecution might indeed cease, but there would be an ensuing spiritual drought for which the price would be high. Indeed, the price would be that of potentially forfeiting your salvation. You turn your back on Christ, you turn your back on salvation.
And so what we have to see here is what counsel, as the author here in chapter 13, gives to keep these recipients of his letter from turning away from the inner ring. The lure, the attraction, the peace that it offers in saying, “No matter what happens, you want to stick to Christ.” And in particular he gives us where Christ is, and in this case, he places Christ outside the camp, outside the camp, and he calls us, he calls the Church, he called these Jewish Christians to join Christ outside the camp and to live there, outside away from the inner ring, away from the influential, away from those who were seeking to have power and influence. He said, “Join Christ outside the camp.” And so as we consider this, first, we want to give thought to what the author has to say about living outside the camp and why it’s significant to go out of the camp to Christ. Secondly, we want to see what the author has to say about the importance of having good leaders, leaders who will point the Church of Christ to go to Him outside the camp. And then third and finally, we want to think about the outcomes, we want to think about the outcomes in terms of, “What should our life look like as we seek to live outside the camp?” I have to apologize. I’m not good at alliteration like Pastor Strain is! I do work on it, but it doesn’t come as naturally as perhaps as to him,.
Living Outside the Camp
So let’s give thought here, first, to what the author has to say about living outside the camp. If we were seeking to launch a product, you know, sell something, we would want to, of course, get a large following so that we could have as large an audience and as large a market as possible. We’d want to create a message. We’d want to create an attractive brand. “If you join with us, if you buy this product, your life is going to look well. It’s going to look terrific. It’s going to look attractive.” We would want to make it look appealing. We would want to show what particular benefits you could have from using this product, whatever it might be. This type of methodology and methoding is what draws people into the inner circle. It looks appealing. It looks attractive. They want to be on the “in;” they don’t want to be on the “out.”
But the author here draws us to a very different place. He doesn’t draw us initially to what seems to be attractive. He says in chapter 13 verse 12, “So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through His own blood.” Jesus is on the outside. And if you remember, we could say the architecture of the land or the geography of the land, being outside the camp wasn’t a good place. Being outside the camp meant that you had some sort of unholy contagion. You were unclean, and so you had to go outside the camp. Being outside the camp was the haunt of demons. It was the place where the Gentiles lived, not the holy inner circle of the camp of Israel where God’s holy presence dwelled. Being outside the camp was a place of curse. If you recall, according to the book of Leviticus, on the Day of Atonement in Leviticus chapter 16, the high priest was supposed to take and go to the scapegoat and hold his hands over the head of the goat, confess the sins, his sins and the sins of the nation over the goat, and then someone is supposed to lead that goat outside the camp to the wilderness and to bear the sins, to bear the curse of the people outside the camp. And he says Jesus suffered outside the gate, outside the gates of Jerusalem. Verse 11, “For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place as by the high priest as a sacrifice are burned outside the camp.”
He’s not painting living outside the camp or being sacrificed outside the camp or Christ’s crucifixion outside the gates as something as attractive, as appealing. Rather, he is saying, “In other words, Christ went outside the gates of Jerusalem and He bore the curse of the Law. He suffered.” We could say that this particular imagery, I think, sweeps away all of the encrusted romanticism that is often assumed and brought to bear – when we think about the cross of Christ, we think about it in romantic terms when it was anything but romantic. It was gruesome. It was curse-bearing work. Christ suffered tremendously and ignominiously. The way the Old Testament prophets described it, say for example whether it’s Jeremiah the prophet in the eleventh chapter, or Isaiah in the fifty-third chapter, that Christ was cut off from the land of the living. He was cursed. Jesus suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through His own blood.
And so if this is where Christ is, notice where the author draws us, where he beckons, where he calls. He says in verse 13, “Therefore, let us go outside the camp and bear the reproach that He endured.” There certainly is no attractiveness here. There is no appeal. The marketing firms would say, “No, no, no, no. This is not the way to go about it. This is all wrong! You’ve got to lead with a more positive message. You have to show the appeal of the Christian faith, the benefits, the blessings. Don’t make too many demands of people.” And yet, I don’t know who said it but ever since I read the quote, the quote has stuck in my mind. And the quote says this – that, “You cannot put sugar on the lip of the bitter cup of salvation and bid people to come and die to themselves.” And this is what the author is doing. He is saying we must go to Christ who suffered outside the camp and bear the reproach that He endured. There’s so many portions of the Church who don’t want to promote this message.
It was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who said, “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance. It’s baptism without Church discipline. It’s communion without confession. It’s absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is without discipleship. Grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ living incarnate.” The author, on the other hand, points us in a different direction. Bonhoeffer says, “Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field. For the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has. It’s the pearl of great price which the merchant will sell all of his goods. It’s the kingly rule of Christ for whose sake man will pluck out the eye that causes him to stumble. It is the call of Jesus Christ at which the fisherman drops his nets to follow Jesus.” And so the author beckons us to go to Christ, go to Christ outside the gates.
And throughout the Scriptures we see this message repeatedly in various Old Testament narratives. Think, for example, of Esther, Queen Esther. If there was anybody who was ever an insider, it was Esther. She was the queen. She was inside. She was in the royal palace. And when the specter of the suffering of God’s people came upon them, what was it that Mordecai said to her? He beckoned her, as the author beckons us, “Go to Christ outside the camp. Intercede on behalf of the people of God, even if it costs you your life.” Esther 4:14, “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish; who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Mordecai beckoned her, “Endure the reproach and the suffering. Go to Christ.”
Earlier in the book of Hebrews we find again the same message as the author looks back upon the Old Testament narratives, and in particular, the life of Moses. In Hebrews chapter 11 verse 23, the author points us to Moses’ parents. “By faith Moses, when he was born, he was hidden for three months by his parents because they knew the child was beautiful and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.” You remember the account? Pharaoh said, “I want all of the Israelite males killed.” But yet, Moses’ parents knew that he was a beautiful child. They knew he was beautiful not in the sense that he was aesthetically pleasing or, “Oh wow, look at how gorgeous he is,” but rather they recognized that God was doing something and would do something through Moses and so they saw the beauty of God’s plan of redemption in the life of their child. And so what did they do? They protected him in defiance of the king’s edict.
Not only did they protect him, but this is something that Pastor Strain pointed out in my wife’s Sunday school class a number of weeks ago, is that as they sought to protect the life of Moses, they put him into a little ark and sent him down the river where pharaoh’s daughter discovered him. And as she discovered him, she immediately knew, “Oh look, it’s a Hebrew child!” How would she know it was a Hebrew child? Because the child was circumcised, because Moses was circumcised. Think of it, in that context, why on earth would you mark your child with the sign of the covenant promise of the gospel of God’s grace in Christ if it could endanger his life? If there was ever a time to be part of the inner circle, it would be there. Don’t give him the sign of the covenant to protect his life. And yet, Moses’ parents said, “No, we go to Christ outside the gates. We go to Christ outside the camp and we mark our child with the sign of the covenant.”
Again Moses, in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, verses 24 and following, “By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ of greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt. He was looking to the reward.” Moses was raised in pharaoh’s household. Again, like Esther, he is in the inner circle! He is in the very palace of the king, and yet he said, “No, I go to Christ outside the camp. I will suffer with the people of God. I will turn away from the moral, the ethical, and the theological and spiritual compromises that I would have to make in order to be a part of that ring, in order to endure or to enjoy the pleasures and the peace that accompanies those compromises and I go to Christ outside the camp.”
Following Godly Leaders
So if this is where Christ beckons us to come outside the camp, how is it, how is it that we can join Him? Well this brings us to our second point, which is, we have to pray for godly leaders. The author says in verse 7, “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the Word of God.” The author is not saying, “Hey, let’s take a jog down memory lane. Let’s remember our leaders fondly.” I mean I suspect that wouldn’t necessarily be something that would be contrary to what he is saying but it’s not exactly what he’s getting at. Rather, he gives them two-fold instruction here in that he wanted them to remember their leaders first and foremost the truth that these leaders taught them. Verse 9, “Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it good for the heart to be strengthened by grace not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them.” He didn’t want them wandering from the faith.
I think one of the biggest dangers we face in the Christian life is straying from the truth. It was G.K. Chesterton, an influence upon C.S. Lewis, who once said that “There are an infinite number of angles at which one might fall into error, but there is only one at which we stand straight for the truth.” And so the author here says you’ve got to remember your leaders, remember the things that they’ve taught you; stick to the truth, don’t wander from it. Because again, a great danger is compromise. To be a part of the inner ring, all you have to do is just make a small compromise right here. “It’s just moving one number into another column.” “Just tell one small white lie and we’ll let you keep your scholarship.” “Just small, small little compromises. It’s nothing big. It’s nothing to worry about. Come on, everybody does it.” He says, “No.” He says in the latter half of verse 7, “Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” Within the context of Hebrews, there are statements that point to the fact that the leaders themselves were suffering and were themselves imprisoned for their faith in the gospel of Christ. And so what we need in the Church of Jesus Christ in this way is not only to remember our leaders, to remember their godly teaching, but we need to pray for their integrity, pray for their courage, pray for their strength.
As somebody once put it to me, many, many years ago as he prayed for me, “I pray that the Lord would pour steel into your spine, that you would not yield a single fraction of an inch to the lie.” That’s what we need to pray for our leaders. We need to pray that God would give us godly leaders, those who would point us to Christ, who preach nothing but Christ and Him crucified. That they would not preach what the world’s itching ears wants to hear; that they would not preach compromised truths, but they would preach the unfettered gospel of Christ. Moreover, that they not only preach those truths but that they embody them. One of the things that Paul, for example, criticized the religious leaders of his day – and he does this in the second chapter of Romans – is he said, “You then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?” Hear the author saying, “Remember your leaders. Remember your teaching. Pray for them. Intercede for them.” So that’s one of the ways in which we’ll go outside the camp, is if we have godly leaders to say, “Follow me. Follow me as I follow Christ.”
Seeking the Right Outcomes
But then third and finally, we want to give thought to what the author has to say about seeking the right outcomes. In other words, seeking to be godly in an ungodly age. What Bonhoeffer observes is that he says, “Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must incessantly knock.” Are we going to incessantly knock at the door of heaven in prayer, through the means of grace and through the preaching of the Word, to say, “O Lord, feed me”?
As I’ve grown older, sadly, my metabolism has gone down. We were on a road trip this week and I have to say, I’m growing ever increasingly envious of my boys and their metabolism. You know, we’re driving down the road and my wife had prepared a healthy lunch and I had my carrots and I had some sandwich meat and I had a good, nice healthy balance. And of course about an hour or two after that my boys are like, “We’re hungry!” “What do you mean? We just had lunch!” My wife said, “I know, we’ll stop at Buc-ee’s and we’ll get you a brisket sandwich!” I was like, “What is this? Second lunch? I like second lunch!” My wife didn’t offer me second lunch. So they came back into the car and they had their brisket sandwich and a hotdog and who knows what else and I’m just saying, “What happened?” See, I’ve been watching my calories because I know if I’m not careful, if I don’t eat the right things, that number on the scale starts ticking up and before you know it, my trousers don’t fit so well and then I get grouchy. Not a good thing.
What you eat is of vital importance and you’ve got to eat the right things. How is it that you seek the godly outcome of obedience to Christ? You’ve got to watch your spiritual diet. The inner ring is going to want to say, “Here, let me feed you this! Let me feed you this feast of lies.” Whereas Christ outside the gate says, “Come to Me, all you who are weary laden, and I will give you rest. You will no longer thirst, you will no longer hunger because you have sought first My kingdom and My righteousness.” This is why the author says in verse 10, “We have an altar for which those who serve the tent have no right to eat.” See, the lure was to go back to Judaism, go back to the dietary food laws, flee the persecution. And he says those foods avail to nothing. We have the right to eat from an altar which they have no right. And that right is the right to eat the manna from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will nourish you. He will strengthen you. He will give you the resolve. He will give you the courage. He will give you the joy to go outside the camp and to bear the reproach that He endured. You won’t have to watch your calories, per say, because there is a sense in which eating the manna from heaven, there’s no limit. It’s always nourishing.
And you’ll have no desire whatsoever for whatever feast the inner circle tries to offer you. We’ll join Abraham, Isaac and Jacob at the great feast of the Lamb. We’ll join Moses’ parents in marking our children for the gospel of Christ, regardless of the cost. We will stand by the cross of Christ when others hide their face and walk away because through it all, Christ will nourish and sustain us and we’ll have peace, a peace that surpasses understanding. You see, the world will tell you, “Don’t go to Christ outside the gate. There’s suffering there! There’s sacrifice there. There’s pain there.” And yet what Christ says is, He says, “No, there’s rest here. There’s rest. And in the midst of the chaos there is peace and joy.” As Peter walked out upon the stormy waters, as long as he looked upon Christ, he was walking on water. As we look to Christ by faith, in the midst of the chaos and whatever the world may try to throw at us, Christ will give us peace because we will be where we are supposed to be.
And so this is why he says there in verse 13 and verse 14, “Therefore let us go outside the camp and bear the reproach that He endured, for here we have no lasting city but we seek the city that is to come.” In other words, where, ultimately, do we place our citizenship? Is our citizenship here on earth? If it is here on earth, then these inner rings matter. We have to play the game. We have to make the compromises. We have to try to satisfy the people around us. But if our citizenship is in heaven, and the only person’s approval that we ultimately will seek and desire to seek is the approval of our heavenly Father, the only words of approbation we will desire to hear is, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” But again, we have to recognize, how is it that we come about and are able to do this, to have the desires, to have the courage? It’s by feeding upon Christ because we eat from that altar from which the world has no right to eat.
But also look in verses 15 and 16. “Through Him, through Jesus, then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge His name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” We no longer offer up animal sacrifices because Christ has offered up His once and for all sufficient sacrifice. When He said, “It is finished,” that meant the sacrificial system is finished. But at the same time, as we go outside the camp and join Christ, as Paul said in Romans chapter 12 verse 1, we offer up our lives as living sacrifices. But what we have to remember is, we have to be able to look at our lives through the eyes of faith because the world will look and they’ll see some offered hospitality, they’ll see submitting to the authority of the church elders and the pastor, heeding obedience to the Word of God – they will see those things as pedestrian, mundane, and perhaps inconsequential and insignificant. And yet what the author is saying is that these seemingly mundane and ordinary acts are far from mundane and ordinary. They are the beams and lights of heaven itself as the righteousness of Christ shines forth in the midst of this sin-darkened world and it goes out from heaven into us throughout the world so that people see the truth of the gospel of Christ. So he says there in verse 17, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.” That might seem mundane and ordinary, but it’s the light in the air of the new heavens and the new earth breaking forth in the midst of this sin-darkened world.
C.S. Lewis observed of all passions, “The passion for the inner ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.” Are we going to seek acceptability, likeability, popularity, safety from persecution in the confines of the inner ring? I think in previous generations this question maybe was not as pressing, but I suspect as you look at the news and you see that the more the world rages against the truth of God and His gospel, the more God’s people may be required to stand up to tell this truth, to speak the truth in the midst of this darkness. Are we going to seek the safety of the inner ring? Remain silent? Maybe make a compromise or two so that we have safety? Or will we beckon Christ’s call to go to Him outside the camp? Our prayer should be that as by the grace of God in Christ through His Spirit that He would give to us that desire to go to Christ outside the camp, to bear the reproach that He endured, not because it’s going to merit us anything, not because it’s going to make us better people, but because we have been united to Christ and where our Head goes, so our body goes, so the Church goes, and that is the only place where we find our true self in the sense of who God created us to be and to whom He united us in Christ. So we should pray that God would awaken our sleepy faith that we might feed upon Him, to be strengthened, so that we would go outside the gate to suffer with Christ. As the author writes in verse 13, and I close with these words, “Go to Him outside the camp and bear the reproach that He endured, for here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. Through Him, then, let us continually offer up sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge His name.”
Let’s bow together in a word of prayer.
We are grateful that You have given to us Your Word and You have given to us especially the Word incarnate, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was willing for a deep love for us to go outside the camp and to endure the curse and suffering that was due unto us. We pray, O Lord, that You would give unto us a great faith, a faith that would not eschew suffering or persecution, but rather a faith that would be willing to tell the truth, a faith that would be willing to speak of Christ, a faith that is willing, O Lord, to worship You through seemingly mundane acts such as love, hospitality and obedience, all for the sake of glorifying Your name. Give us courage in the face of this chaotic, sinful world that seems to be crumbling around us, that we would stand tall for Christ and in the midst of the chaos, we pray that You would give us peace and joy – a joy that surpasses all understanding, a peace that surpasses all understanding. Mold us and shape us more and more into the image of Christ that we would die to self and live unto Thee. And that we would, as Christ has told us, to take up our crosses and to follow Him. We pray and ask all of these things in Christ’s precious and holy name, amen.