Outside the Camp

[Brad Fox]

As a matter of daily practice, I always start my day by reading an Old Testament book of the Bible followed up by a New Testament book and then a brief devotional reading.  This has been an outstanding habit that has fortified me for the challenges that lie ahead each day.  I like reading the O.T. books because they foreshadow the life and work of Christ and give essential depth and meaning to the Gospel.  I think the message of the Bible would be greatly diminished if we weren't able to read about the hopelessly broken condition of the world as portrayed in its earlier pages, as well as the unconditional, undying love of our Creator in the more recent ones .

So it was particularly fascinating one day recently when I read about the religious rituals surrounding the operation of the Tabernacle, Israel's first place of worship as a nation.  Basically, the Tabernacle was a set of concentric rectangular tents and fabric panels that were used to "house" the God of the Israelites, Elohim.  The tabernacle really didn't function as a church building for the common people; rather it was an exclusive location for worshipping and sacrificing to God by a select priesthood.  God himself was thought to reside in the center-most tent, the holy of holies, hovering above an ark (box) that contained Israel's 10 commandments.  No one could expect to enter this part of the Tabernacle without paying with his life, with the exception of the Chief Priest who would enter only once a year, and then only to make a crucial sin sacrifice for the nation.  The Israelites had become very wary of their Lord God at the base of Mount Sinai; they were terrified by His voice and His strength, and they asked Moses to be their intercessor in their stead.  While they didn't want to get on His wrong side, they certainly didn't want to approach God either.

The Tabernacle was all about limited access to God; about exclusion.  It was designed like a religious sieve to filter people in or out according to their worthiness and their acceptability to God.  Aliens need not apply for access to even the outer court of the Tabernacle.  Israelite women could get admitted to the outermost courtyard, but no further.  And those who might normally be admitted might find themselves temporarilty excluded based on temporary issues of personal purity.  So it was that those family members who had to care for the corpse of a deceased loved one would not only be prevented from entering the Tabernacle, they would also be asked to leave the rather large Israelite encampment for a set period of time until they made themselves ritually pure again.  Likewise, those who touched a culturally or religiously unclean animal, women who were experiencing their monthly menstrual flow, or men who had had a wet "dream" would be cast out of camp until they had performed the appropriate washings, sacrifices or rituals that restored them to purity status.  It was a rather harsh way to live, but was considered the only appropriate way to appease their all powerful, jealous Elohim.

It was while reading the history of the Tabernacle that I started seeing some amazing parallels for it in the life and body of Christ.  One of the sacred pieces of furniture that was in the holy place adjacent to the Holy of Holies was the Table of the Bread of the Presence.  This was a fine wood piece covered in gold sheets that was used to hold specially purified bread that was ceremonially placed there to provide food for God, more out of respect for Him than a practical necessity (Hello, Israelites!  Don't you realize that God made the wheat you used to bake the bread?!)  This bread was placed on the Table just before the Sabbath began and stayed there for a week.  Eventually the priests would remove and replace it with fresh bread, which meant that they themselves could eat it.  In my theology reading some years ago, I came to realize that ceremonially sacred foods were often considered to contain the god to whom they were sacrificed; when one partook of sacrificial meat, it was like taking a part of the adored god into your body.

Years later, when reading about the nativity scene, it dawned on me that the manger in which the Christ child lay was itself a crude model of the Table of Presence, only this one contained the most holy and precious pure bread ever made; Jesus.  This bread, made by God Himself, was prepared for all men to eat, not just a select priesthood.  And of course, the manger table itself couldn't have been more crudely opposite from its Tabernacle counterpart, caked as it was with the saliva and dung of animals, and the slivers of a tree. 

Jesus also turned the structure of the Tabernacle inside out, embodying the Holy of Holies in himself.  Only this Holy of Holies was more like a grace-bearing delivery vehicle than an exclusive club.  You see, Jesus took His perfection, His holiness, His acceptance out of the camp to the people who were considered most unholy and most unworthy of acceptance.  It was in the person and work of Jesus that we transition from the overwhelmingly scary Elohim God to the tender, personal, self-sacrificing Yahweh God.  When Jesus touched lepers to heal them, when he was touched by women who couldn't stop their monthly "flow", when he touched and raised dead people, He was turning upside down everything that the Israelites understood about Elohim.  Here was God touching and associating with the very people whom they themselves thought were disqualified from approaching Elohim.  Yahweh/Jesus set aside human ritualistic restrictions and by reaching out and touching them, made them holy! 

Now the Tabernacle system of reverence and God worship became inclusive.  No one can be excluded or thrown outside of the camp.  Through Yahweh/Jesus, everyone is has access to the Father.  Never again will there be a dividing line between "inside" and "outside" the camp.  Our new encampment around God is not "bounded."  We're all "in" now!  The only question is whether we are moving toward the center of camp (God) or moving away from Him. 

As God said to Adam in the first question of the Bible:  "Where are you?"  And shortly thereafter, he asked Cain, "Where is your brother?" 

I guess answering these questions will give us some idea of where we have pitched our tent!