Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Create in Me a Clean Heart, O God

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when ^(A)Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.

⁶ Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth. ⁷ And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. ⁸ Of clean animals, and of animals that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, ⁹ two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah. ¹⁰ And after seven days the waters of the flood came upon the earth.

The Flood Subsides

8 But God ^(A)remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And ^(B)God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided. ^2 (C)The fountains of the deep and ^(D)the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, ³ and the waters receded from the earth continually. At the end ^(E)of 150 days the waters had abated, ⁴ and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of ^(F)Ararat. ⁵ And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen.

False Prophets and Teachers

2 But ^(A)false prophets also arose among the people, ^(B)just as there will be false teachers among you, who will ^(C)secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master ^(D)who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. ² And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth ^(E)will be blasphemed. ³ And ^(F)in their greed they will exploit you ^(G)with false words. ^(H)Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

⁴ For if God did not spare ^(I)angels when they sinned, but ^(J)cast them into hell^[a] and committed them to chains^[b] of gloomy darkness ^(K)to be kept until the judgement; ⁵ if he did not spare the ancient world, but ^(L)preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought ^(M)a flood upon the world of the ungodly; ⁶ if by ^(N)turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, ^(O)making them an example of ^(P)what is going to happen to the ungodly;^{[c] 7} and ^(Q)if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked ⁸ (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, ^(R)he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard); ⁹ then ^(S)the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials,^[d] and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgement, ¹⁰ and especially ^(T)those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and ^(U)despise authority.

Bold and wilful, they do not tremble ^(V)as they blaspheme the glorious ones,