Context for Jonah 3-4
God’s amazing grace trumps man’s selfishness every time. If it did not, we would all be condemned by our own foolishness.
Nineveh was an evil city, and God decided to do something about it. What He decided to do was send Jonah to that city to proclaim God’s judgment in an effort to get the Ninevites to repent, and they did. This seems like a fairly cut and dried story of God’s prophecy achieving its results except for one thing: God’s prophet was mad that Nineveh was not destroyed.
Honestly, Jonah reacted the same way we all do when we see someone we thing should not be rewarded doing well in life. We wonder at the justice of God’s blessings falling onto the lives of those we consider undeserving as well as those who we might concede are deserving.
What we forget in that evaluation is that none of us are deserving of any of God’s grace. In fact, He gives His grace to us as a gift because we do everything we can to spite God through sin. What God really wants us to see is that His grace can come to us more fully when we do His will. When we stop worrying about everyone else and start concentrating on doing what God wants us to do, then we can fully realize God’s grace in our own lives.
