Follow Through

 What would have happened if Noah hadn’t acted on what God told him to do? What would have happened if, having heard that the end of all flesh was near, Noah would have shrugged his shoulders and gone about his business as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred?

What God commanded Noah to do was no small thing. He was not commanded to build a toy boat to sail around the lake; he was commanded to build an ark big enough to hold two of every sort of living thing, plus food rations, plus Noah and his family.

Although opinions vary on how long it took Noah to build the ark, there is a consensus that it took over fifty years, fifty being the minimum and as long as seventy-five. After God gave Noah his instructions, the Word does not infer that He checked up on Noah occasionally or gave him a pep talk every so often.

God told Noah what He planned to do, gave him the blueprint for what he needed to do, and Noah went to work.

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

Not only did Noah get to work, he did so according to all that God commanded him. He didn’t try to cut corners, make the ark shorter by a few cubits, or fail to cover it with pitch on the inside and outside. God’s instructions were specific, and Noah’s follow-through was likewise specific.

I’ve always found it peculiar when God speaks to someone, giving them specific instructions, they come nowhere doing what God told them to do but still expect God to keep His end of the agreement and intervene on their behalf. There’s a reason God uses ‘IF’ in the Bible so often. You can’t circumvent the conditionality of Scripture when it comes to certain promises God makes.

Had Noah not done what God commanded, as He commanded it, would Noah and his family still have been saved? There’s a question that should keep you up at night if you’re not walking in the will of God.

We all know that if His people who are called by His name will humble themselves and pray and seek His face, He will heal their land, but will they? The entire promise of restoration hangs in the balance, contingent on those two letters: IF.

I don’t know if Noah ever saw rain or not. We like to speculate on the matter, but what we know with certainty is that it hadn’t rained before the fall of Adam and Eve. Whether it rained after and Noah had seen rain is irrelevant to me. Even if it poured every other day, the man still labored for fifty years based on one instruction he’d received from God.

Even if Noah had seen rain, that it would rain so much for so long that every living thing on the earth would perish was still something he had to take on faith.

Because the ark, the flood, and the animals two by two are the focal points of the saga, we tend to gloss over the amount of faith Noah possessed to do what he did while being mocked, ridiculed and whispered about behind his back by the people of his time.

It didn’t matter to Noah who said what about him. He had a duty to perform a job to finish, and day after day, he went at it with the zeal and gusto of a new hire at his dream job.

Fifty years minimum. Toil and sweat and countless hours sawing and hammering, measuring and cutting, all off of one encounter with God where He revealed His plan to Noah. He wasn’t even teleported to heaven to sit on God’s lap, as some modern-day soothsayers insist is happening to them every other day and twice on Sunday. God spoke to Noah, and Noah listened. Then Noah did what God told him to do.

He didn’t start a prophecy school, nor did he put together a course on how to hear the voice of God for yourself; he obeyed, not for a season, not for a year, not until the novelty wore off, but until he finished; until he was done. Until there was an ark to God’s specifications, fully functional and complete.

Noah was a just man who walked with God, perfect in his generation, before being tasked with building the ark. The righteousness was a prerequisite for the instruction he would receive to save himself and his family. It’s not semantics. It matters because we’ve grown used to doing nothing but the bare minimum and even less, if possible, sort of faith because we believed the voices who insisted that God no longer has a standard.

Noah was perfect in his generation before God put him to work for over half a century. That should give us all reason for pause, especially if we’ve come to believe that all that’s required of us is walking the aisle and saying a prayer.

There’s a difference between an act of obedience and walking in obedience. Between an act of faith and walking in faith. Noah walked in both obedience and faith, doing as God instructed for as long as he needed to until the job was done. For His role, God stayed the rains until Noah finished, then once everyone was aboard the ark, He shut the door so that no one could enter anymore.

Everyone wants a seat on the lifeboat once they see the waters rising. You don’t have to take it on faith anymore; then again, at that point, it’s not faith. It’s instinctual self-preservation. People don’t want the lifeboat because Jesus is in it; they want it because it will spare their lives.

Are you reacting in fear or faith to the things you see around you? Are you reacting out of obedience or a sense of self-preservation? If God commanded you to do something that you and your household might be saved, have you followed through, or are you focusing on something else that human reason insists will work better? So many questions, so few answers. Such is life sometimes.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.