God had divinely warned Noah about the coming flood. At this time in man’s history, there was not yet a written revelation from God to man, no Bible; thus He had divinely warned Noah about this judgment to come. Thus God put Noah to work in the great project of building the ark according to the design revealed to him.

However, Noah was not just building, he was also preaching. In fact, the Bible calls him a “preacher of righteousness.” We are told that it was the Spirit of Christ in him who enabled him when he “preached” (1 Pet. 3:18–19). His hearers, though, were “disobedient,” they rejected his message despite the “Divine longsuffering” and they are now “in prison” (1 Pet. 3:20).

It was not just Noah’s Spirit-filled preaching that was a testimony to the doomed antediluvian inhabitants. The actual day-to-day building of the great ark was; every echo of the hammer, every sound of the saw, was a testimony. The antediluvian world had never before seen rain; the original creation was watered by some type of subterranean system (Gen. 2:6; 7:11). How longsuffering God is, how slow to judge!

What was the response from Noah’s congregation? We have already seen that the Word of God calls them disobedient, but they were certainly scoffers as well. Their attitude is recorded for us in the Book of Job: they said to God, “Depart from us! What can the Almighty do to them?” (Job 22:15–18). They scoffed at the very idea of a flood. They taunted Noah: What could the Almighty do to them? Their history is a shadow of what is to come: “Scoffers will come in the last days” (2 Pet. 3:3–4). Let us be as Noah was, faithful witnesses of both God’s grace and the coming judgment.