Pitched Within & Without

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon's captions — published in summary form; watch the full sermon at the source.

Two arks, one sealing

Williams preaches the Sunday-night service at Eastgate — the same day as the morning service where souls were baptized and filled with the Holy Ghost — as an encouragement to God's people, from two texts that mirror each other. In Genesis, with judgment coming and Noah having found grace, God commands the ark: rooms, one window, one door, and the charge to "pitch it within and without with pitch." In Exodus, Jochebed hides her three-month-old son from Pharaoh's slaughter as long as she can, then makes him "an ark of bulrushes" and daubs it "with slime and with pitch" before laying it in the flags by the river's brink. Two arks, two impending floods, one sealing agent — and one thought: "Pitched within and without."

Scriptures: Genesis 6:14; Exodus 2:3

Floods test what the pitch covers

Life, he says, blindsides: the rain that does not stop becomes a flood, and floods test foundations, sweep people off their post and their passion, and make even getting to church hard — but the just keep wading, and "everything is going to be all right." Noah's obedience is in the details: 300 cubits by 50 by 30, one window, one door — holiness as God's way, since there is only one door and one way to God. The pitch itself is the sermon's center: the Hebrew word is kin to the word for atonement, the covering of blood under which judgment passes over. It has to go on every corner, crevice, and crack, inside and outside — Jesus on the inside pushing back against the pressure, and the covering of the blood on the outside — because a vessel empty on the inside implodes under outside pressure. Parents are charged to keep pitching the ship and drag their children aboard: preparation is part of preservation, and yesterday's prayers, tears, and fasts are sometimes what carries a believer through today.

Scriptures: (none cited in this section)

The door Noah could not pitch

Then the turn: when the animals are in, two of every unclean and sevens of the clean, the Bible says "the LORD shut him in." Noah is inside the ark — so who pitched the outside of the door? Nobody could. The door in the side of the ship was beyond the pitcher's reach, and God kept it himself. That, Williams says, is the word for the house: there comes a point where you have done all you can, and where you end is where God starts. There is nothing wrong with reaching the end of your energy, intelligence, and understanding and putting the bucket down. He tells of asking God as a much younger evangelist why God seems most inactive when his people need him most, and the answer he lays on the congregation: God refuses to put his hands in a situation while our hands are still in it.

Scriptures: Genesis 7:15-16

Jochebed's hardest step: backing away

The sermon lands on Moses' mother at the river. Williams imagines her weaving and daubing the basket while the baby cries, the Shema in her ears — the Lord our God is one Lord; trust in him with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding — Miriam watching from a distance. The hardest thing Jochebed had to do was not making the ark or carrying it to the brink; it was backing away from it. His close applies both stories the same way: put the bucket down, put the basket down, lift your hands, and give God the weights your shoulders cannot carry — because when the floods come, the Spirit of the Lord comes at the same time. The upload ends inside that invitation. In a personal aside mid-sermon, he mentions hurrying home afterward to his wife and their boys — the newest just one month old.

Scriptures: (none cited in this section)