Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Had He Not Been on Our Side

Psalm 124

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.

⁶ It was at the end of forty days that Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made. ⁷ Then he sent out a raven and it kept going back and forth until the waters were drying up from the land. ⁸ Then he sent out a dove to see whether the waters had receded from the surface of the ground. ⁹ But the dove did not find a resting place for the sole of her foot. She returned to him in the ark because water covered the surface of the whole land. He stretched out his hand and he took her, and brought her to him into the ark. ¹⁰ So he waited yet another seven days and again he sent the dove out from the ark. ¹¹ The dove came to him at evening, and surprisingly—a freshly plucked olive leaf was in its mouth. So Noah knew that the waters had receded from the land. ¹² After he waited seven more days, he sent out the dove, but she did not return to him again.

¹³ It was in his six-hundred-and first year—in the first month, on the first day of the month—that the waters had dried up from the land. Then Noah removed the cover of the ark and he looked, and behold, the surface of the ground had dried up. ¹⁴ By the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the land was dry.

Noah’s Soothing Sacrifice

¹⁵ Then God spoke to Noah, saying, ¹⁶ “Come out of the ark, you and your wife, your sons and your sons’ wives with you. ¹⁷ Every animal that is with you of all flesh, including the flying creatures, livestock and every crawling creature that crawls on the land, bring out with you, and let them swarm in the land and be fruitful and multiply upon the land.”

¹⁸ So Noah came out, with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives. ¹⁹ Every animal—every crawling creature, every flying creature, everything that crawls upon the land—came out from the ark in their families.

Who Is Your Master?

6 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may abound? ² May it never be! How can we who died to sin still live in it? ³ Or do you not know that all of us who were immersed into Messiah Yeshua were immersed into His death? ⁴ Therefore we were buried together with Him through immersion into death—in order that just as Messiah was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

⁵ For if we have become joined together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also will be joined together in His resurrection— ⁶ knowing our old man was crucified with Him so that the sinful body might be done away with, so we no longer serve sin. ⁷ For he who has died is set free from sin.

⁸ Now if we have died with Messiah, we believe that we shall also live with Him. ⁹ We know that Messiah, having been raised from the dead, no longer dies; death no longer is master 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 So also continually count yourselves both dead to sin and alive to God in Messiah Yeshua.