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"For You cast me into the deep"

Text: Jonah 2:3

A DEEPLY REFLECTIVE PRAYER

Jonah’s prayer was deeply reflective. He could see God’s sovereign hand in everything!

“For You cast me into the deep,
Into the heart of the seas,
And the floods surrounded me;
All Your billows and Your waves passed over me.
Then I said, ‘I have been cast out of Your sight;
Yet I will look again toward Your holy temple.'”
Jonah 2:3-4

1. “For You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas”

a) The mariners were the ones who had cast Jonah into the deep.

b) But truly, it was the Lord who had orchestrated this event.

c) Thus, Jonah acknowledged God’s hand in his present predicament.

2. Consciousness of his dire physical surroundings

a) Jonah was “into the deep”.

b) He had been cast “into the heart of the seas”.

c) The “floods surrounded me”.

d) “The billows and waves” came from the LORD.

e) These four expressions explain why Jonah felt he was “in the belly of Sheol”.

3. “I have been cast out of Your sight”

a) This was perhaps far worse than the physical plight he was in.

b) To feel “cast out” from (God’s) sight would have produced this possible set of feelings.

i) Forlorn and dejected feelings

ii) Forsaken and despairing feelings

iii) Futility and failure

4. “Yet I will look again toward Your holy temple”

a) Jonah must have exercised his power of memory greatly.

b) He remembered God’s holy temple.

c) This might have stirred up his faith in the Lord.

d) He would now look up to the Lord with hope in his heart.

e) His heart would plead with the Lord for His mercy and for His pardon for being so disobedient.