Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Create in Me a Clean Heart

Psalm 51

⁶ Now Noah was 600 years old when the flood came—water upon the land. ⁷ So Noah, his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, entered the ark because of the floodwaters. ⁸ Of the clean animals and unclean animals, the flying creatures and everything that crawls on the ground, ⁹ two by two they came to Noah, into the ark, male and female, just as God commanded Noah.

¹⁰ After the seven days, the floodwaters were upon the land.

8 Then God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. So God caused a wind to pass over the land and the water subsided. ² Also the sources of the deep and the windows of the skies were closed up, and the rain from the sky was held back. ³ The waters kept receding gradually from upon the land and the waters decreased by the end of 150 days. ⁴ The ark came to rest in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. ⁵ The waters went on decreasing until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains appeared.

False Teachers Condemned

2 But false prophets also arose among the people,^[a] just as there will also be false teachers among you. They will secretly bring in destructive heresies. They will even deny the Master who bought them^[b]—bringing swift destruction upon themselves. ² Many will follow their immoral ways, and as a result the way of the truth will be maligned. ³ In their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction does not slumber.

⁴ For God did not spare angels when they sinned, but threw them into Sheol.^[c] He put them in chains of gloomy darkness, to be held until the judgment. ^{[d] 5} He did not spare the ancient world. He preserved only Noah, a proclaimer of righteousness, along with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly. ⁶ He devastated the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, reducing them to ashes^[e]—making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly. ⁷ He rescued Lot, a righteous man deeply troubled by the shameless immorality of the wicked. ^{[f] 8} (For that righteous man, while living among them, was tormented in his righteous soul day after day by lawless deeds he saw and heard.) ⁹ Therefore the Lord certainly knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and how to keep the unrighteous being punished until the Day of Judgment— ¹⁰ especially those who follow after the flesh in its unclean desires and who despise the Lord’s authority.^[g]

Brazen and arrogant, these people do not tremble while slandering glorious beings;