Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Praise for Rescue from Enemies.

A Song of ^[a]Ascents. Of David.

The Flood Abates

8 And God remembered and thought kindly of Noah and every living thing and all the animals that were with him in the ark; and God made a wind blow over the land, and the waters receded. ² Also the fountains of the deep [subterranean waters] and the windows of the heavens were closed, the [pouring] rain from the sky was restrained, ³ and the waters receded steadily from the earth. At the end of a hundred and fifty days the waters had diminished. ⁴ On the seventeenth day of the seventh month [five months after the rain began], the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat [in ^[a]Turkey]. ⁵ The waters continued to decrease until the tenth month; on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains were seen.

⁶ At the end of [another] forty days Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made; ⁷ and he sent out a raven, which flew here and there until the waters were dried up from the earth. ⁸ Then Noah sent out a dove to see if the water level had fallen below the surface of the land. ⁹ But the dove found no place on which to rest the sole of her foot, and she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were [still] on the face of the entire earth. So he reached out his hand and took the dove, and brought her into the ark. ¹⁰ He waited another seven days and again sent the dove out from the ark. ¹¹ The dove came back to him in the evening, and there, in her beak, was a fresh olive leaf. So Noah knew that the water level had subsided from the earth. ¹² Then he waited another seven days and sent out the dove, but she did not return to him again.

¹³ Now in the six hundred and first year [of Noah’s life], on the first day of the first month, the waters were drying up from the earth. Then Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and the surface of the ground was drying. ¹⁴ On the twenty-seventh day of the second month the land was [entirely] dry. ¹⁵ And God spoke to Noah, saying, ¹⁶ “Go out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives with you. ¹⁷ Bring out with you every living thing from all flesh—birds and animals and every crawling thing that crawls on the earth—that they may breed abundantly on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” ¹⁸ So Noah went out, and his wife and his sons and their wives with him [after being in the ark one year and ten days]. ¹⁹ Every animal, every crawling thing, every bird—and whatever moves on the land—went out by families (types, groupings) from the ark.

Believers Are Dead to Sin, Alive to God

6 What shall we say [to all this]? Should we continue in sin and practice sin as a habit so that [God’s gift of] ^[a]grace may increase and overflow? ² Certainly not! How can we, the very ones who died to sin, continue to live in it any longer? ³ Or are you ignorant of the fact that all of us who have been ^[b]baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? ⁴ We have therefore been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory and power of the Father, we too might walk habitually in newness of life [abandoning our old ways]. ⁵ For if we have become one with Him [permanently united] in the likeness of His death, we will also certainly be [one with Him and share fully] in the likeness of His resurrection. ⁶ We know that our old ^[c]self [our human nature without the Holy Spirit] was nailed to the cross with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. ⁷ For the person who has died [with Christ] has been freed from [the power of] sin.

⁸ Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live [together] with Him, ⁹ because we know [the self-evident truth] that Christ, having been raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has power over Him. ¹⁰ For the death that He died, He died to sin [ending its power and paying the sinner’s debt] once and for all; and the life that He lives, He lives to [glorify] God [in unbroken fellowship with Him]. ¹¹ Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin [and your relationship to it broken], but alive to God [in unbroken fellowship with Him] in Christ Jesus.