I. The Sins of the First World, the Cause of Its Destruction
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How this chapter and the preceding one are connected 1.
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It is terrible that God destroyed by a flood the first world, which
was the best 2.
- Of pride and the proud.
1. How God humbles what is high and grand in the eyes of the world and has the best gifts 3-4.
- How man can meet the judgments of God 4.
2. The more gifts man has the greater his pride 5.
3. The most terrible examples of punishment God gives in the case of the proud and such examples should be diligently pondered 6-7.
- The complaint that the world is hardened by reason of God’s
judgments 7-8.
4. How the ancient world was misled into pride through its gifts 9-10.
5. Pride is the common weakness of human nature 11.
6. In what ways man is moved to pride 12-13.
a. The chief sin of the old world 14-15.
- Pride is the spring of all vices 15.
b. How the old world sinned against the first table of the law, and brought on the sins against the second table 16.
c. How and why God punished the old world 17.
- From the punishment of the first world we conclude that
the last world will be also punished 18.
d. Whether the first world was wicked before Noah’s birth; on what occasion its wickedness increased 19.
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Noah the martyr of martyrs 20.
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Why Lamech called his son Noah 21.
e. How sin greatly increased in the days of Noah 22.
- Why Noah remained unmarried so long, which was his
greatest cross 23.
f. When the wickedness of the old world began 24.
- Concerning unchastity.
(1) It is the foundation of all want and misery 24.
(2) It is the spring of many other sins 25.
(3) How to remedy it 25.
(4) Whether bearing children is in itself to be reckoned as unchastity, and how far Moses denounces it 26.
(5) Unchastity makes the bearing of children difficult 27.
g. The reason the sons of God looked upon the daughters of men 28.
h. Why the sin of the first world was not so terrible as the sin of the second 29-30.
i. How the first world changed through the marriages of Adam and the other patriarchs 30-32.
- The sons of God.
(1) What is understood by them 32.
(2) The rabbins’ fables about the sons of God, how to refute them 33-34.
- What is to be held concerning the “Incubis” and
“Succubis” 34-35.
(3) How the deluge came because of the sons of God 36.
(4) To what end should the fall and punishment of the sons of God serve us 37-38.
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Should the Romish church be called holy 37.
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How the children of God became the children of the
devil 38.
- How Noah had to spend his life among a host of
villains 39.
- The conduct of the world when God sends it righteous
servants 40.
I. The Sins of the Primeval World in General the Cause of Its
Destruction
1. In the first five chapters Moses describes the state of the human race in the primeval world and the wonderful glory of the holy patriarchs who governed it. In these five chapters the chronicles as in the first book, so to speak, the happiest period of the whole human race and of the world before the flood. Now we shall begin what may be termed the second book of Genesis, containing the history of the flood. It shows the destruction of all the offspring of Cain and the eternal preservation of the generation of the righteous; for while everything perishes in the flood, the generation of the righteous is saved as an eternal world.
2. It is appalling that the whole human race except eight persons is destroyed, in view of the fact that this was truly the golden age; for succeeding ages do not equal the old world in glory, greatness and majesty. And if God visited with destruction his own perfect creation and the very glory of the human race, we have just cause for fear. 3. In inflicting this punishment, God followed his own peculiar way. Whatever is most exalted he particularly overthrows and humiliates. Peter says in 2 Peter 2, 5: God “spared not the ancient world;” and he would imply that it was, in comparison with succeeding ages, a veritable paradise. Neither did he spare the sublimest creatures—the angels—nor the kings ruling his people, nor the first-born of all times. But the more highly they were blessed with gifts, the more sternly he punished them when they began to misuse his gifts.