Noah's Longsuffering Obedience

January 29th, 2026
by Lance Waldie

Genesis 6:22 Thus Noah did; according to all that God had commanded him, so he did.

What exactly did Noah do that God commanded? Plenty. In a world full of wickedness, Noah preached righteousness (2 Pet. 2:5). That in itself is something, especially in light of the fact that after 120 years of preaching repentance, apparently no one believed. For when Noah entered the ark, it was the same eight people God had promised to save—Noah, his wife, his sons, and their wives. But preaching was perhaps the easy part for Noah. Being tasked to build an ark 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high (Gen. 6:15) was a monumental task! Worse than the task itself would have been the ridicule from all the people who got wind of what he was doing. “You’re building a what?” “There’s going to be a flood that kills everyone on the earth?” For 120 years Noah endured ridicule, having only God’s word and promises to trust. Noah must have been the butt of every joke, Noah and his family—his wife, his sons, and their wives.

Of course what Noah did is not that different from what we as Christians today preach. We too live in an evil world surrounded by wicked men and women. Like Noah’s day, there is violence everywhere. People hate one another, publicly celebrating the deaths of their enemies. Sexually, we seem as corrupt as when the sons of God took the daughters of men in marriage—demons indwelling wicked men who marry beautiful but wicked women, producing an offspring that adversely influences each successive generation. From lawmakers and politicians to preachers and professors, the once-unspoken, hidden evil of mankind is bold and confident, audacious and bereft of any and all fear of God. The world may be getting technologically smarter, but morally, the world is taking the plunge into the dark fires of eternal hell.

Not only do we live in an evil world similar to Noah’s, we are viewed similarly—ignorant and stupid, preaching God’s word to a world that laughs at us. Like Noah, we believe in the unseen God who has promised to judge all of mankind, not in 120 years but when the time comes that only He knows. We, like Noah, tell the wicked people around us to take shelter in the ark of Jesus Christ—trusting in Him alone for salvation so that when God does judge, He will pass over those who trust in Christ. The question is, when God’s judgment does fall, will it be said of us, like Noah, that we “did according to all that Yahweh commanded”?

One other thing Noah did that is easy to overlook is that when the day came for him to board the ark with his family and all the animals God brought to him to be saved on the ark, he sat on that ark for seven full days until it began to rain (Gen. 7:7, 10). Imagine building such a structure, everyone laughing and joking at your expense. Your family sitting with you in silence over the course of seven long days. Noah perhaps wondered if he was crazy, hearing the voices of his tormenters outside the ark banging on the hull, saying, “Where’s this flood God promised, Noah?” But against all his instincts, and like every man and woman of faith from Abraham to the last Christian, Noah believed God. He believed God perhaps when even his family did not. And when it was time, God exonerated Him. Now we know Noah as the righteous, blameless man who walked with God—the man who found favor with Yahweh, doing everything He told him.

Doing all that God told him to do was who Noah was—an obedient servant of God. This would have been a great lesson for Moses to teach Israel since their first forefather, Adam, had failed to do God’s will. Other patriarchs that appeared in Israel were often unfaithful, and they as well as the nation of Israel suffered for that disobedience. Like Noah, it was said of Moses that he “did everything just as the Lord commanded him” (Exod. 40:16). Thus, Israel could look to men like Noah and Moses as models of covenant fidelity—men who heard the voice of God and simply obeyed (cf. Exod. 39:32, 42; Num. 1:54; 2:34; 9:5). Not only them, but us too! God has given us heroes in the Bible to look to as models of faithfulness. None better than Jesus though!