Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
The Lord Saves His People
A song for going up to worship. Of David.
124 What if the Lord had not been on our side?
(Let Israel repeat this.)
2 What if the Lord had not been on our side
when we were attacked?
3 When they were angry with us,
they would have swallowed us alive.
4 They would have been like a flood drowning us;
they would have poured over us like a river.
5 They would have swept us away like a mighty stream.
6 Praise the Lord,
who did not let them chew us up.
7 We escaped like a bird
from the hunter’s trap.
The trap broke,
and we escaped.
8 Our help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.
The Flood Ends
8 But God remembered Noah and all the wild and tame animals with him in the boat. He made a wind blow over the earth, and the water went down. 2 The underground springs stopped flowing, and the clouds in the sky stopped pouring down rain. 3-4 The water that covered the earth began to go down. After one hundred fifty days it had gone down so much that the boat touched land again. It came to rest on one of the mountains of Ararat[a] on the seventeenth day of the seventh month. 5 The water continued to go down so that by the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains could be seen.
6 Forty days later Noah opened the window he had made in the boat, and 7 he sent out a raven. It flew here and there until the water had dried up from the earth. 8 Then Noah sent out a dove to find out if the water had dried up from the ground. 9 The dove could not find a place to land because water still covered the earth, so it came back to the boat. Noah reached out his hand and took the bird and brought it back into the boat.
10 After seven days Noah again sent out the dove from the boat, 11 and that evening it came back to him with a fresh olive leaf in its mouth. Then Noah knew that the ground was almost dry. 12 Seven days later he sent the dove out again, but this time it did not come back.
13 When Noah was six hundred and one years old, in the first day of the first month of that year, the water was dried up from the land. Noah removed the covering of the boat and saw that the land was dry. 14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the land was completely dry.
15 Then God said to Noah, 16 “You and your wife, your sons, and their wives should go out of the boat. 17 Bring every animal out of the boat with you—the birds, animals, and everything that crawls on the earth. Let them have many young ones so that they might grow in number.”
18 So Noah went out with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives. 19 Every animal, everything that crawls on the earth, and every bird went out of the boat by families.
Dead to Sin but Alive in Christ
6 So do you think we should continue sinning so that God will give us even more grace? 2 No! We died to our old sinful lives, so how can we continue living with sin? 3 Did you forget that all of us became part of Christ when we were baptized? We shared his death in our baptism. 4 When we were baptized, we were buried with Christ and shared his death. So, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the wonderful power of the Father, we also can live a new life.
5 Christ died, and we have been joined with him by dying too. So we will also be joined with him by rising from the dead as he did. 6 We know that our old life died with Christ on the cross so that our sinful selves would have no power over us and we would not be slaves to sin. 7 Anyone who has died is made free from sin’s control.
8 If we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him. 9 Christ was raised from the dead, and we know that he cannot die again. Death has no power over him now. 10 Yes, when Christ died, he died to defeat the power of sin one time—enough for all time. He now has a new life, and his new life is with God. 11 In the same way, you should see yourselves as being dead to the power of sin and alive with God through Christ Jesus.
The Holy Bible, New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.