Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Psalm 124

A Song of Ascents. Of David.

The Flood Recedes

8 God remembered Noah and every living thing and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. So God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the water receded. ² Also the fountains of the deep and the floodgates of heaven were closed, and the rain from the heavens was restrained. ³ The water receded steadily from the earth, and after the end of one hundred and fifty days the waters decreased. ⁴ The ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat. ⁵ The water continually decreased until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains became visible.

⁶ Then at the end of forty days, Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made, ⁷ and he sent forth a raven, which went to and fro until the waters were dried up on the earth. ⁸ Then he sent out a dove to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground. ⁹ But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, so she returned to him into the ark, for the waters were on the surface of all the earth. Then he put forth his hand, and took her, and brought her into the ark to himself. ¹⁰ He waited yet another seven days, and again he sent out the dove from the ark. ¹¹ The dove came to him in the evening, and in her mouth there was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth. ¹² He waited another seven days and sent out the dove again, but it did not return to him again.

¹³ So in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and saw the surface of the ground was dry. ¹⁴ In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry.

¹⁵ Then God spoke to Noah, saying, ¹⁶ “Go out of the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. ¹⁷ Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you, birds and animals, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, so that they may breed abundantly on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”

¹⁸ So Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives went out. ¹⁹ Every beast, every creeping thing, every bird, and everything that moves on the earth, according to their families, went out of the ark.

Dead to Sin but Alive in Christ

6 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may increase? ² God forbid! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? ³ Do you not know that we who were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? ⁴ Therefore we were buried with Him by baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

⁵ For if we have been united with Him in the likeness of His death, so shall we also be united with Him in the likeness of His resurrection, ⁶ knowing this, that our old man has been crucified with Him, so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we should no longer be slaves to sin. ⁷ For the one who has died is freed from sin.

⁸ Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, ⁹ knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death has no further dominion over Him. ¹⁰ For the death He died, He died to sin once for all, but the life He lives, He lives to God.

¹¹ Likewise, you also consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.