QUESTION: In Christendom what answers now to the camp?
ANSWERS: Wherever I find the world united to the church or to religion, that is the camp. Persons who have brought in false doctrine are the vessels to dishonor, and we have books such as The Christian World, but we cannot take it all in a lump.
In Jeremiah 15, we have separating the precious from the vile. There we see Jeremiah in constant exercise of heart before God and man. In verse 15 he calls for vengeance saying, "Revenge me of my persecutors.... For Thy sake I have suffered rebuke." But then he adds, "Thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart." In verse 17 he does not rejoice, but is filled with indignation. He is representing Jerusalem before God, and God says to him, "If thou return, then will I bring thee again, and thou shalt stand before Me: and if thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as My mouth: let them return unto thee; but return not thou unto them" (vs. 19).
The first returning is in the way of testimony; then, if Jerusalem comes back, there will be the blessing. We must not, however, fight the evil—"return not thou unto them"—but let them return unto you. "And I will make thee unto this people a fenced brazen wall: and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee: for 1 am with thee to save thee and to deliver thee, saith the Lord.”
There is the principle for us. God's Word, with all the blessed things that are in it, becomes the joy and rejoicing of the heart. We must take God's Word and use it to separate the precious from the vile, and then we become as God's mouth.
The reproach in Hebrews 13:1313Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. (Hebrews 13:13) is Christ's reproach: "Let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach." He is an outcast, a rejected Lord. Hanged as a malefactor, He was in the fullest reproach, and in more than reproach.
We go there to Him. If we are to be as His mouth, we must in practice be there with Him, bearing His reproach.