Heb. 13:13-14

13 Let us go forth [exerchomai] therefore [toinun] unto [pros] him [autos] without [exo] the camp [parembole], bearing [phero] his [autos] reproach [oneidismos].

14 For [gar] here [hode] have we [echo] no [ou] continuing [meno] city [polis], but [alla] we seek one [epizeteo] to come [mello]. KJV-Interlinear

13 Hence, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach. 14 For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come. NASB

When Moses went up the mountain (Mt. Sinai) to receive the Law, the rest of the camp got themselves into the golden calf incident. They began worshiping it, rather than waiting patiently for Moses to return with Gods Word.

Moses then took the tent, which was the primary means of communication with God, and set it up outside of the camp at some distance. He took it far enough so that when he went to speak with God, the whole camp could look out and watch the meeting, Ex. 33.

In fact when anyone wished to go and communicate with God, they had to leave the camp in order to go to the tent of meeting, as it was called.

The camp had become associated with apostasy. So just as the Law was not the path to follow for deliverance, but was the path of condemnation, so too, living within the camp and seeking God from within the camp was the wrong path to pursue.

Therefore, separation was the order of the day. One not only had to separate himself from his environment, but he had to separate himself from all parts of the camp life in order to gain access to God. This separation is not one of geography, not one of action, but one of a pattern of thinking.

It is not what you do, nor where you go in order to gain access to God, nor even the direction you face. Leaving the world means leaving the pattern of thinking of the world. It is not a literal departure.

Moving to the desert, or to the mountains, or to some isolated place will not get you closer to God, if that is all that you do.

Neither is becoming an ascetic, or trying to live the perfect and pure life. What you do is not going to get you closer to God. Lots of folks are totally confused with respect to Gods will and methods.

Some run off to join some cult or monastery. Some try to do Gods bidding by getting involved with activities in the world like saving a fish or some old building. Some try to impose standards, they deem worthy, onto society.

It is even interesting that the group of people who were kidnapped in Iraq several months ago, and were rescued today, blamed their rescuers for their being kidnapped, rather than thanking them for being rescued. Some people are totally confused as to what is truth and what is right in the world. When is it ever right to condemn ones rescuer for their good, and excuse the criminal for their evil.

Jesus Christ went outside of the rules of the world and lived by rules that are not a part of this world. Therefore, we are to leave the rules of the world behind, and join Christ outside of the camp of the world and live by His rules for life.

The cities of this world were built by man. One day they will all disappear. God has built a city, even a nation, which is where our true home exists, and to which we will one day go. It is that city which we should seek, rather than the decaying environment of this world.

The world hates God. The world hates truth. The world hates the Savior, Jesus Christ. The world has hated them since the fall of Satan. And Satan has adopted a relentless pattern of antagonism, a relentless pattern of accusation, a relentless pattern of hate against all that associates itself with anything having to do with God or His truth.

That is why anything or anyone having anything to do with God, truth, or Christ, will be hated. This is also why you will always see and hear a constant barrage of anti-truth rhetoric in the public media. The incessant pounding of lies are intended to drive you from God and your spiritual life, by getting you to adopt the lies into your beliefs.

All of those who promote the lies of the world will one day see the error of their ways, but that will not be until they leave this world. For them it will be too late, of course.

There is one more important principle to be taken from these verses. That despite the constant pounding of the attacks against truth, there are those people who will see through their emptiness and see into Gods plan for humanity and for their own personal lives. This in itself is a miracle produced by God be means of only His written word.

The world will rave, and scream, and falsify polls, and promote false ideas, and refuse to reveal the good in the world, and yet in all of this activity, those promoters of these false ideas, will have available to them, the truth regarding their errors. They simply reject the truth and become fanatical about their own self invented lies. They make themselves the fools of fools.

To adopt the policies of fools (the camp) is to reject God and truth. To adopt truth, means that you must leave the pattern of thinking of the world, behind. To advance in your spiritual life likewise means that you must reject the world and embrace the pattern of thought which God teaches, rejecting the compromised standards or beliefs that the world tries to promote.

Now is the time to post a prayer.