(June 2004 TG Entry: Camp.  Given as a devotional on the Priest Quorum Campout to Starved Rock State Park, Illinois, May 28^th 2004)

Overview

This entry discusses how we are asked to leave the world (the camp, or city) and become a people set apart.

Without the Camp

12 Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.

13 Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.

14 For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.

Heb. 13:12 – 14

What does it mean Jesus suffered without the gate?  What gate?  Where did he suffer?  He suffered both at Gethsemane and Golgotha, both of which are without or outside of the gates of Jerusalem.

If we would follow him, we must go to him, outside of the camp or city.  It is not an easy thing to leave the city.  There will be some that mock us, which reproach us, for doing so.  Being in the city is the popular thing to do.  All the real exciting things happen in the city, not outside it.  But we must leave the world behind, and follow him without the camp.

We don’t have any part of this city.  We are looking for a better city, one that will come later, perhaps in the next life, even the City of Zion.