Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

To the director: A song of David written when Nathan the prophet came to him after David’s sin with Bathsheba.

⁶ Noah was 600 years old at the time the rains came. ⁷ He and his family went into the boat to be saved from the flood. His wife and his sons and their wives were on the boat with him. ⁸ All the clean animals, all the other animals on the earth, the birds, and everything that crawls on the earth ⁹ went into the boat with Noah. These animals went into the boat in groups of two, male and female, just as God commanded. ¹⁰ Seven days later the flood started. The rain began to fall on the earth.

The Flood Ends

8 But God did not forget about Noah. God remembered him and all the animals that were with him in the boat. God made a wind blow over the earth, and all the water began to disappear.

² Rain stopped falling from the sky, and water stopped flowing from under the earth. ^3-4 The water that covered the earth began to go down. After 150 days the water was low enough that the boat touched land again. The boat stopped on one of the mountains of Ararat. This was the 17th day of the seventh month. ⁵ The water continued to go down, and by the first day of the tenth month, the tops of the mountains were above the water.

False Teachers

2 In the past there were false prophets among God’s people. It is the same now. You will have some false teachers in your group. They will teach things that are wrong—ideas that will cause people to be lost. And they will teach in a way that will be hard for you to see that they are wrong. They will even refuse to follow the Master who bought their freedom. And so they will quickly destroy themselves. ² Many people will follow them in the morally wrong things they do. And because of them, others will say bad things about the way of truth we follow. ³ These false teachers only want your money. So they will use you by telling you things that are not true. But the judgment against these false teachers has been ready for a long time. And they will not escape God who will destroy them.

⁴ When angels sinned, God did not let them go free without punishment. He sent them to hell. He put those angels in caves of darkness, where they are being held until the time when God will judge them.

⁵ And God punished the evil people who lived long ago. He brought a flood to the world that was full of people who were against God. But he saved Noah and seven other people with him. Noah was a man who told people about living right.

⁶ God also punished the evil cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. He burned them until there was nothing left but ashes. He used those cities as an example of what will happen to people who are against God. ⁷ But he saved Lot, a good man who lived there. Lot was greatly troubled by the morally bad lives of those evil people. ⁸ This good man lived with those evil people every day, and his good heart was hurt by the evil things he saw and heard.

⁹ So you see that the Lord God knows how to save those who are devoted to him. He will save them when troubles come. And the Lord will hold evil people to punish them on the day of judgment. ¹⁰ That punishment is for those who are always doing the evil that their sinful selves want to do. It is for those who hate the Lord’s authority.

These false teachers do whatever they want, and they are so proud of themselves. They are not afraid even to say bad things against the glorious ones.^[a]