Using Your Light

¹⁶ “No one, after lighting a lamp,^(A) covers it with a basket or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a lampstand so that those who come in may see its light.^{(B) 17} For nothing is concealed that won’t be revealed, and nothing hidden that won’t be made known and brought to light.^{(C) 18} Therefore take care how you listen. For whoever has, more will be given to him; ^(D) and whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has will be taken away from him.”

True Relationships

¹⁹ Then his mother and brothers^(E) came to him,^(F) but they could not meet with him because of the crowd. ²⁰ He was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you.”

²¹ But he replied to them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear and do the word of God.”^(G)

Slaves and Masters

⁵ Slaves, obey your human^[a] masters^(A) with fear and trembling,^(B) in the sincerity^(C) of your heart, as you would Christ. ⁶ Don’t work only while being watched, as people-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing God’s will^(D) from your heart. ⁷ Serve with a good attitude, as to the Lord and not to people,^{(E) 8} knowing that whatever good each one does, slave or free, he will receive this back from the Lord. ⁹ And masters, treat your slaves the same way, without threatening^(F) them, because you know that both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism^(G) with him.^(H)

The Flood Recedes

8 God remembered Noah,^(A) as well as all the wildlife and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. God caused a wind to pass over the earth,^(B) and the water began to subside. ² The sources of the watery depths and the floodgates of the sky were closed, and the rain from the sky stopped.^{(C) 3} The water steadily receded from the earth, and by the end of 150 days the water had decreased significantly.^{(D) 4} The ark came to rest in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat.^(E)

⁵ The water continued to recede until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were visible. ⁶ After forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made, ⁷ and he sent out a raven. It went back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. ⁸ Then he sent out a dove to see whether the water on the earth’s surface had gone down, ⁹ but the dove found no resting place for its foot. It returned to him in the ark because water covered the surface of the whole earth. He reached out and brought it into the ark to himself. ¹⁰ So Noah waited seven more days and sent out the dove from the ark again. ¹¹ When the dove came to him at evening, there was a plucked olive leaf in its beak. So Noah knew that the water on the earth’s surface had gone down. ¹² After he had waited another seven days, he sent out the dove, but it did not return to him again. ¹³ In the six hundred first year,^[a] in the first month, on the first day of the month, the water that had covered the earth was dried up. Then Noah removed the ark’s cover and saw that the surface of the ground was drying. ¹⁴ By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was dry.

The Lord’s Promise

¹⁵ Then God spoke to Noah, ¹⁶ “Come out of the ark, you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you. ¹⁷ Bring out all the living creatures that are with you—birds, livestock, those that crawl on the earth—and they will spread over the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”^{(F) 18} So Noah, along with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, came out. ¹⁹ All the animals, all the creatures that crawl, and all the flying creatures—everything that moves on the earth—came out of the ark by their families.

²⁰ Then Noah built an altar to the Lord. He took some of every kind of clean animal and every kind of clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. ²¹ When the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma,^(G) he said to himself, “I will never again curse the ground^(H) because of human beings, even though the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth onward.^(I) And I will never again strike down every living thing as I have done.^(J)