Angry at God's Grace

Jonah 4:2

And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.

It is more common than we realize that a person's anger with God is over His grace. Of course we all desire that God be gracious toward us, but we are often our only own exception. We want God to get everyone who has not been gracious to us.

·       We want undeserved comfort

·       We want unearned Liberty

·       We want unmerited favor

·       We want God to wink at our own sins.

We just don't want the same grace for others.

Bitter souls are the most likely to think this way. Jonah's own experience with Nineveh had left him bitter against them and it was in this bitterness that he fled from the call of God to preach to them. It was this bitterness that angered him when God was gracious toward them. It was this same bitterness that compelled Jonah to tell the sailors just to cast him overboard.

That God is gracious today in no way implies that God is unjust. The Bible makes it clear that there is a coming day of God's justice. He will pour out His wrath upon the ungodly. We, in fact, can be patient and gracious knowing that God willing right all wrongs in the end.