Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

A song to sing as we climb.

David wrote this song.^[a]

The deep water goes away

8 Then God thought of Noah, and all the wild animals and the farm animals that were with him in the ship. He caused a wind to blow over the earth. As a result, the water began to go down. ² Streams of water stopped coming up from below the earth. Rain stopped coming down from the sky. ³ The deep water continued to go down for 150 days. ⁴ On the 17th day of the seventh month, the ship stopped on the ground. It was sitting on the top of Ararat mountains. ⁵ The water continued to go down until the tenth month. On the first day of the tenth month, the tops of the mountains appeared above the water.

⁶ After 40 more days, Noah opened a window in the ship. ⁷ He sent a raven to fly away. The raven flew away from the ship and then it returned. It continued to do this until the earth was dry.

⁸ Then Noah sent out a dove. He wanted to see if the water had gone away from the top of the ground. ⁹ But the dove could not find anywhere to stand. Water still covered all the ground. So it returned to Noah in the ship. Noah put out his hand and took the dove back into the ship. ¹⁰ He waited for seven days. Then he sent the dove out of the ship again. ¹¹ The dove returned to Noah in the evening. It carried a fresh leaf from an olive tree in its mouth. Then Noah knew that the water had gone down. ¹² He waited for seven more days. Then he sent the dove out again. This time, it did not return to Noah.^[a]

¹³ Noah was now 601 years old. On the first day of the first month, the water that had covered the earth was now gone. The ground had become dry. Noah made a hole in the roof of the ship and he looked around. He saw that the top of the ground was dry. ¹⁴ By the 27th day of the second month, the earth had become completely dry.

¹⁵ God said to Noah, ¹⁶ ‘Come out of the ship. Bring your wife, your sons and their wives with you. ¹⁷ Bring every different kind of living animal out of the ship. Bring out the birds, the animals, and the living things that move across the ground. Now they may give birth to young ones again. They can grow in number all over the earth.’

¹⁸ Noah went out of the ship, together with his wife, his sons and their wives. ¹⁹ All the living animals also went out of the ship. The birds and the living things that move across the ground all went out. Every different kind of animal came out of the ship, each of them in its own group.

Sin does not rule us any longer

6 Someone might say, ‘Perhaps we should continue to do wrong things. Then God can be kind to us in more and more ways.’ ² No! Certainly we should not do that! Sin does not rule our lives any longer. That old life is dead! So it is not right that we should continue to do wrong things. ³ Remember what your baptism shows: When they baptized you, it shows that you are united with Christ Jesus. It also shows that, because Christ died, your old life also died.^{[a] 4} Your baptism shows that they buried you, just like they buried Christ after his death. It is like you died with him and they buried you with him. Because of that, God will also raise us, just as he raised Christ from death. God, the Father, is so great and powerful that he raised Christ to a new life. That means that we also can live our lives in a new way.

⁵ We have become united with Christ, and we have died like he died. Because of that, we will also be united with him in his new life. Just like Christ rose, we also will rise to a new life. ⁶ We know that God has caused our old nature to die with Christ on the cross. This happened so that God could make us free from the power of sin in our lives. We are no longer like slaves who have sin as their master. ⁷ Sin no longer has any authority over someone who has died.

⁸ So, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. ⁹ God raised Christ, so that he became alive again after his death. Because of that, we know that he will never die again. Death has no authority over him any more. ¹⁰ When Christ died, he died once to destroy the power of sin for ever. Now that he is alive again, he lives to serve God. ¹¹ So you also should think about yourselves in the same way. Sin has no power over you, as if you were dead. In your new life, you live to serve God, because you belong to Christ Jesus.