Outside the Camp

So, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach. (Hebrews 13:13)

John the Baptist was a vessel used to prepare the way of the Lord – to call out and then prepare God’s people for his coming. He was a voice in the wilderness. Jerusalem at the time of John was filled with kingdom teaching, music, worship every Sabbath, the priesthood, spiritual leaders, prayers for the coming of Messiah, etc. but John was a two to three day journey from this fundamental “camp” but those who were hungry for the truth went to him in the wilderness, in repentance.

The church is a corporate vessel which is also meant to call out and prepare God’s people for His coming. The attraction to John was the Spirit in him, not his geographic location (next to a major freeway) or his advertising campaigns or his miracles (John didn’t do any miracles), or his reputation, education, social standing, theological training, outreach programs, etc. The attraction to John was simply that those who were hungry for the truth recognized that truth embodied in the life of this prophet. The church is called the pillar and ground of the truth. She is meant to be the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of truth, expressed in a corporate way, in unity, in love, in supernatural glory. This is both the attraction to those who are seeking the Lord as well as preparation of the bride who is to make herself ready for His coming.

Where there is no corporate expression there is no corporate attraction. Again, it’s not an issue of advertising, programs or whistles and buzzers. The Lord is trying to show His son in fullness to the world and to show his own people what Christ in us is meant to be in real life. The one New Man of Ephesians 2:15 and other passages, and the eternal purpose surrounding the body of Christ, is much bigger and very different than simply individual Christians teaching a Sunday school class or passing out sandwiches and tracts on Burnside.

To possess the fullness of Christ as His corporate body in resurrection power, we are commanded to go outside the camp, Heb. 13:13, (as did John the Baptist). The camp of evangelical Christian fundamentalism is filled with teaching, worship, outreach and programs, but God is outside the camp forming a true, crucified, vessel; one who has no agenda but Christ Himself; whose very life is their Lord (for me to live is Christ, Phil. 1:21).

Acts 13:27 demonstrates dramatically that there can be a real disconnect between knowledge and spiritual reality. The spiritual leaders of the day knew the scriptures and were busy in service to God, but were completely disconnected from the spiritual reality behind those scriptures. Consider this disconnect in our modern camp of Christianity as illustrated by Major Ian Thomas:

Jesus was thought to be the illegitimate child of an unfaithful woman, so socially, how much was He worth? Nothing.

Born of peasant stock, His schooling was negligible, sufficing only to equip Him for the humble duties of a common craftsman. Professionally, how much was he worth? Nothing.

A fanatical street-preacher and rabble rouser, He was totally repudiated by all the ecclesiastical dignitaries of His day, and having had absolutely no theological training whatever, was looked upon with supreme contempt by all that called itself scholarship among those who searched the Scriptures. Ecclesiastically, theologically, and intellectually how much was He worth? Nothing.

His financial standing was such that he even had to borrow a coin for one of His far-fetched illustrations. He was an incorrigible scrounger by all natural standards of value, for He had no home of His own. Born in a borrowed stable, He lived and dined in borrowed homes; He rode upon a borrowed donkey, and was buried in a borrowed tomb. He was bankrupt from the start. Financially, how much was He worth? Nothing.

If the Lord Jesus Christ were to appear in the world today under similar circumstances, what church would allow Him to be their pastor? What Bible college or seminary would appoint Him to their faculty? What missionary organization would invite Him on their board or even send Him to the field?

The reality is this: No matter what our current standards of evaluation may be a man is worth only as much as can be seen of God in Him?

What does the world think of your church; fear, amazement, or simply another 501-c3- non-profit religious organization? One of millions. Big on charity, but not as big as United Way. Big on singing, but not nearly as big as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Big on community, but not compared to the intimacy and caring of the cults or the street gangs of New York. Big on teaching and the increase of knowledge, but not compared to the great philosophers of our ivy league universities.. We’re not in competition with the world, but we’re not meant to be nonessential to those genuinely seeking to know the truth. We’re barely relevant to God’s own people, let alone the lost masses of humanity.

We don’t establish relevancy by getting bigger, busier, more polished and more socially conscious. That’s not the picture you get of the early church. It was because they were wholly abandoned to Christ and because the world saw Christ in them that the church turned the world upside down. The world didn’t see Christians mimicking the role model and teachings of a dead prophet. They saw a living resurrected Savior living out His own life in a vessel given to Him. They were sinners just like us, but they were serious about discipleship – about Christ being genuinely Lord in their lives. As a response to that faith and surrender, Christ Himself was being revealed.

When the body of Christ is unsure of what God is after but genuinely wants to serve Him, it gets creative. We may be living in the most creative generation of all time. We know pieces of God’s plan but we don’t know what ties it all together.

Often when we believe we are pursuing God’s will, we really want our own will, or we want to do what we believe is His will in our way. We struggle to find ways to do what we have seen Him do in the past and in the Scriptures, but we won’t look to Him exclusively to make these things happen. What we see in the book of Acts isn’t the result of man’s creativity, it happened because Christ had found a group of people who were willing to lose their lives for Him.

The church is bigger and busier than ever, but Christ corporately expressed is practically unknown. The church has a billion programs and doctrines; but the emptiness in the human soul remains. Why is this the case and why doesn’t anyone care? Why do churches believe this is not true? How can they rationalize and claim that what they are doing is the same as the historical church in Acts, the same as the meaning of the church in Ephesians and the other Pauline epistles?

The church is in need of a major spiritual recovery without which she will not become a bride ready to glorify her Lord here or receive Him at his coming.

The Lord Jesus Christ wants to pour out great grace and power as He’s done in the past, but he won’t pour out that grace and power on a church with its own agenda. He won’t empower and enable religious flesh. Churches whose leadership uses their own general understanding of the Bible coupled with their personalities, talents, creativity and cutting edge programs to plan what they believe would be of service to God will never know or express Him in the way He can be known and expressed. But churches who know that apart from Christ they are nothing, that pray and wait on Him for direction and power, and are willing to be restfully available and instantly obedient will see Him revealed through them.

John was filled with (lit. controlled by) the Spirit – his ministry wasn’t his it was God’s. He was fit for the Master’s use because he was only a voice. God was God in him. Our churches desire to be both voice and master of their own version of Christianity. They are like the fingers of a man’s hand who in the morning awake and meet in committee under leadership of the thumbs to decide what would be in their head’s best interest for the day. They would of course claim to be under the rule of the head, but really they are doing what seems best in their own eyes in service to the head. That’s why there are so many so-called visions of ministry, so many denominations, so much disunity. Only the head can unify in a single vision that captures the hearts of all his people.

John represented what Israel was meant to be – a corporate expression of the indwelling, ruling Jehovah. Some Christians represent this in their relationship with Christ, but they are rare and usually isolated. They are outside the camp. The evangelical churches believe only the mainline denominations are outside the camp. They don’t realize that any church, no matter what its name, no matter how many sincere, loving members of the body of Christ may be there, if Christ does not rule and fill all things in them they are campers.

Peter was sincere, loving and totally committed to Christ when he tried to keep Jesus from going to the cross. But it was Peter’s agenda he was concerned about, not God’s.

He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. Get behind me, Satan! he said. You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns. (Mark 8:30-32).

Human concerns. That’s camp life. Doing our best for Jesus. Loving Him, sincerely wanting to honor Him and serving Him. And in all that, being in Satan’s camp. Amazing! Unenlightened enthusiasm capturing the hearts of minds of God’s people because they are clueless as to what this is really all about.

I’ve heard people say, Why not just be thankful for what we have and settle with knowing we’ve done the best we can? To answer this we have to face something Americans find difficult to embrace; the concept that Christianity is meant to be Christocentric rather than us-ocentric. If this was about us then I would agree, focus on what’s going well and overlook the things that fall short. No one’s perfect. But from God’s viewpoint Christianity is about Christ – Christianity is Christ. If Christ is not being revealed in fullness in His people, does it matter what else we’re doing?

We try to heal marriages, we blast porn and hope someone occasionally witnesses to someone. And when we think of corporate ministry, we think of community events, social action, potlucks, connecting to the community and eradicating poverty in third world countries. We don’t hear teaching about the spiritual advance of the church unto a full expression of Christ incarnate in His bride. Why? Because even though that alone is God’s purpose for His church, we’re not even sure what that means anymore.

We’ve lost original intent and original vision. We’re playing church, the one thing we all said we’d never do. But since we don’t know how to do the real thing and we have to do something, we do this instead. Why did we give up? Because to go the way of Christ is to go the way of the cross. That doesn’t appeal to us so we have to stay productive and evidence-based in our ministry in order to believe that what we’re doing counts. Then when someone gets saved or a Christian gives a testimony of how incredible their church is, we relax, fold our hands and kick back, not realizing that a bit of that happening from time to time is not the fullness of the revelation of Jesus Christ in His church. Why would we settle for less than God’s will and provision? We can pump ourselves into a self-congratulatory frenzy and not even see it as that.

How do you know that in your church it’s God’s agenda that is being realized? Do you think that you are seeing the fullness of God’s glory because He has honored the faith of some in the church and has brought some people to salvation or helped a few Christians overcome some personal problems? God will always honor the faith of His children. But is what you see around you a 21st century application of the reality we see in Acts? Acts was never meant to be duplicated, especially by human effort. It was simply an historical account of what happens when Christ, through the Holy Spirit, is free to build His church. It’s like our Lord was saying through the pen of Luke, Here’s what happens when My people get out of the way and let Me be Who I am in them.

And when I refer to Acts in this context I’m not speaking primarily of the miracles or actions of the apostles in their unique ministry. I’m speaking of Christ having full access to the hearts of His people and living out His life and purpose through them. A church in which Christ is truly Lord; in which there are no needs unmet (whether emotional, spiritual or physical) because the love and power of Christ are inexhaustible (Acts 2:42-47; 4:32-34). In the early church, all that Christ is was available to them because they were available to Him without hesitation, without controversy or the pride of personal agendas blocking the flow of His life.

We’ve got some great ideas, Lord, on how to accomplish what You want us to do. We know you want community and fellowship so we’re launching home groups!

How do you know I want you to express my desire for community in home groups and what kind of home groups do I want?

And we know you want us to evangelize the world so we’re sending people to Africa this year!

Do I want you in Africa or in India? Do I want you go now or next year? Which of you do I want to send?

We’ve got some great plans for you Lord and we love you and we are willing to sacrifice anything to do your will. We just need your blessing and power to make these things happen.

Why not let Me direct your steps in all things, including giving you My ideas of what would be best? I know you are sincere and I know you love Me and want to serve Me. But you have not yet died to you; so you are not yet living unto Me. You are grains of wheat that have not fallen into the ground. As I wrote through John to Ephesus, I know your works. I know your unparalleled commitment to Christianity. I know your sound doctrine, your rejection of immorality and false teachers, and your labor for my name’s sake. But you have left your first love; you have forsaken Me as your Master. You are doing all the right things but not in My way, time or power. You have a name that you are alive, but your lampstand is darkened.

God grants revelation to humility. Prayer and a genuine openness of heart must form the foundation of all our study. We would not have seen Christ by the revelation of the Spirit for salvation had we not humbled ourselves, willing to have our own preconceptions of Him crushed by the truth. The same is true regarding the church. God will only reveal the true nature and calling of the church to those willing to have all false images and concepts destroyed by seeing that truth. Very few in the church are willing to do so.

In the early church everything was initiated by the Lord in response to prayer and waiting on Him, not by creative-elder-counsel-meeting-decisions. It’s like we don’t know how to hear the Lord so we do this instead, and since some of it actually seems to work, we assume we’re on track. But what we’ve done is limitation, not fullness, and God wants fullness not limitation (even limitation at its best). This is why there is such a huge emphasis on holiness and spiritual health in the epistles. Healthy churches will reach the world, but they’ll do it under God’s leading not their own.

I know that many pastors have long felt that something is wrong; that this isn’t the real thing. But rather than find out what it really is, they get imaginative. God isn’t interested in our creativity, He’s interested in expressing His Son’s life in us and through us on His terms, not ours; Not by might nor by power (human creativity) but by My Spirit. (Zechariah 4:6). We tend to avoid moving that direction because it will cost us our lives. It’s the cross again. We simply do not like the cross interfering in our noble agendas.

As DeVern Fromke once wrote,

Now to be sure, there are hundreds in our fundamental churches who loudly proclaim that Christ is all we need, that He is completely sufficient, that Christ is our center and circumference. These have become very popular slogans. But perhaps many have only learned these nice phrases and echo them as a parrot would. It seems quite evident that the real significance of Christ as our all has not dawned, for in the very next breath they launch into extensive methods and programs for accomplishing the work of God; immediately they start to search out patterns and principles for doing things – all of which are simply good religious substitutes for Him.

We are fulfilling Paul’s prophetic words in 2 Timothy 3:5,

In the last days . . . they will have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof.

We have the form; in some cases nearly the exact form. But those who can see through the surface know the One Who is missing from this equation. We always thought this verse just applied to the liberal, apostate church. We have been quick to point out the failings of the mainline denominations without pausing for a moment to see if there is a log of equal size in our own eye.

The church is spiritually alive when the individual believers who comprise the church are pressing on to spiritual maturity. It’s not primarily what the church does outwardly but what it becomes inwardly in the spirit that determines life. God looks at the heart, not the outward appearance, because it’s the change in the heart that determines spiritual advance.

We are living in an evidence-based world. This is the paradigm of secular evaluation when it comes to determining the success or failure of a business or organization. But the Lord is just as concerned about the widow’s mite as He is with the outward, flashy generosity of the wealthy. Unfortunately, the church has to a large extent adopted the world’s approach in determining success or failure, health or unhealth. When you’re living in the seen world and have little to no discernment into that which is unseen, going evidence-based in your approach to spiritual diagnostics is all you have left. Unfortunately, many pastors have tried to move their churches into conformity with external criteria without ever addressing the real spiritual issues behind what is seen.

The goal is not activity, the goal is life. Health isn’t based on what people do, it’s based on who they become, which only spiritual discernment can even see. Pastors who know their congregation’s spiritual condition can do wonders for them, whether the need is correctional or simply encouragement for continued advance.

But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have rejected him: for the Lord sees not as man sees; for man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7).

When those in leadership see as the Lord sees, reality will be achieved.

E.M. Bounds once wrote:

We are constantly on a stretch, if not a strain, to devise new methods, new plans, new organizations to advance the Church and secure enlargement and efficiency for the gospel. This trend of the day has a tendency to lose sight of the man, or sink the man, in the plan or organization. God’s plan is to make much of the man, far more of him than of anything else. Men are God’s method. The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.

We can add these words by T.A. Sparks,

God will never put work or service in the place of character; and if we do that, eternity will reveal that however much we may have done, we are very small among the inhabitants of the Land, whose stature will be measured by the measure of Christ. . . the ultimate test is not how much work is done, but how much of Christ is present.

A vessel that can prepare the way of the Lord and that can draw a spiritually starving and deceived world to their Savior, is prepared by spiritual vision and travailing prayer, not by busyness, programs and frantic activity. The world doesn’t want to see committed Christians, they want to see Christ. If we can’t give them Him, we are giving them nothing of eternal value.