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Transcript 354C
"Should I not spare Nineveh?" [Jonah 4:11]
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Hello. I have one question. It concerns the Book of Jonah. The last two verses in Chapter 4 sort of leave me hanging. I don't know what happened with Jonah. What does verse 11 mean?
HC: In Jonah we find that very provocative statement, where God has just spared Nineveh, because Jonah faithfully, finally, he wasn't a very happy prophet, but nevertheless he obeyed God finally, and he preached to Nineveh and told them that if they did not repent in forty days God would destroy them. And finally they did repent, from the king all the way down. It was a tremendous repentance, so that God did spare them.
And then Jonah showed his displeasure at this, because after all, the city of Nineveh was an enemy of Israel. And it was very difficult for Jonah to contemplate the idea that this city would continue to exist. But then God said, "Should I not spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than 120,000 persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle?"
Now that's a very interesting statement. Why the ''much cattle"? The 120,000 is really a statement concerning all the little ones, I would think, in the city, who do not know their right hand from their left. It was a great city, and it may have had a population of a couple of million people, or thereabouts. Maybe not quite that great, but anyway, it was a very great city. And there were many, many little ones in that city.
But also there were cattle. Now the interesting thing in the Bible is that whenever God brings judgment upon the earth, the cattle suffer right along with mankind. When God brought judgment on the world in Noah's day, the animals were destroyed, were they not, right along with mankind? When God killed the firstborn of Egypt, the firstborn of the cattle were killed. Have you ever thought about that? When God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, fire and brimstone rained down on the cities, and the cattle would have been killed right along with the people.
The same is true when God destroyed Jericho, or when the Israelites destroyed Jericho. They were to kill the sheep and the oxen and the cattle, right along with all the people. God's judgment had come upon Jericho. And so will it be in the judgment of the last day. When fire comes down to destroy this old earth, in preparation for God recreating it New Heavens and a New Earth, all of the cattle, all of the animals, will be killed, also.
You see, man was created to rule over this world. He is responsible for this world. Man of course rebelled against God, and dominion was given to Satan. But nevertheless man continues to rule over the cattle. Now it was not the cattle that sinned in the Garden of Eden. It was not the trees, it was not the rocks that sinned. It was man that sinned. But the whole creation, the cattle, the trees, the rocks, the whole creation was subjected to the curse of God, because of man's sin. That is because the cattle and the animal world and the vegetation of the world, and so on, are intimately associated with man. Man had been created to rule over them.
And so when man was cursed, the cattle were cursed. When God's judgment comes upon man, God's judgment comes upon the animals. Now there's another side to this picture. God redeemed mankind. That is, He made provision for the salvation of the believers. And He also has made provision for the redemption of this creation, "For God so loved the world [the cosmos – in that context the word cosmos includes the whole creation – "God so loved the whole creation," really, is what John 3:16 is saying], "that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life." He particularizes on mankind, but it is God's intention to save this creation, that is, to recreate this present earth and heavens, New Heavens and a New Earth, where righteousness dwells.
Now of course right now same of you are saying, "Well, then are there going to be cattle in Heaven?" No, that's not the right question to ask. You see, the Bible says that flesh and blood does not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. We will have spiritual bodies in the New Heaven and the New Earth. Animals have physical bodies. They're flesh and blood. We will not expect to see animals in Heaven, unless they're an altogether different design than what we see here.
But that isn't the point. The point is that the cattle are part of creation, and the creation was cursed because of man, and creation is redeemed because of Christ's work on the cross. The details of that redemption are not really what God deals with. He only deals with the fact that creation as a whole is redeemed.
Now in the destruction of Nineveh, or the possible destruction of Nineveh, when God referred to the 120,000, really that's a figure of what a believer is. Remember Jesus said in Matthew 18, I think, that unless we become as a little child, unless we became as a little child, we shall not see the Kingdom of Heaven, or "Suffer these little ones to came to Me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."
When you find a reference to a child in the Bible, very frequently it symbolizes what a born again believer is. We become as children before God. That is, we have that naive faith of children. The 120,000, that's that number twelve again, which really signifies the fullness of believers. We see it repeatedly in the Book of Revelation: the 144,000 (twelve times twelve), the twenty-four elders (twelve plus twelve), and so on.
120,000 signifies the fullness of believers. The salvation of Nineveh was a figure, really, of the salvation God is providing to all the nations of the world, to all the heathen, all the Gentiles of the world, and the fact that He is going to redeem this creation. That's why I think God introduces this statement here, that there are 120,000 who do not know their left hand from their right hand, also much cattle.
The creation, represented by the cattle, the 120,000 children who do not know their right hand from their left, representing the born again believers. This salvation of Nineveh, the fact that they repented, is pointing to the salvation that God would provide through Christ for all who would believe on Him. Now actually, while this is typology, Nineveh was saved. These people of Nineveh, we read in the New Testament, that they will stand in judgment, and judge Capernaum, and so on, because of their sin. And only those who are saved will have that relationship. There was a marvelous salvation that did take place at Nineveh.
Well, this got kind of complicated, but I hope this will set you thinking, at any rate.