Jonah 2:3, ³ “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.

             ⁴  Then I said, ‘I have been cast out of Your sight;

Yet I will look again toward Your holy temple.’”

2:3

For You cast me into the deep,

Into the heart of the seas,

This phrase says that Jehovah “cast” Jonah into the deep, yet 1:15 says that the sailors did it.  The point is that God used the sailors to cast Jonah into the sea.  Jonah recognized that it was not the sailors who did it.  It was God’s discipline upon his life. 

Job 1:21 “And he said:

‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb,

And naked shall I return there.

The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away;

Blessed be the name of the Lord.’”

And the floods surrounded me;

All Your billows and Your waves passed over me.

Again Jonah acknowledged God’s discipline upon him.

2:4

Then I said, ‘I have been cast out of Your sight;

Jonah viewed himself as banished by God because of his rebellion. 

Yet I will look again toward Your holy temple.’

Jonah vows that he will again walk with the Lord.  At the point of absolute despair, Jonah trusted that God would deliver him.  God did deliver him by the fish. 

PRINCIPLE: 

Vows rarely make any appreciable change in our lives. 

APPLICATION: 

Many of us make vows when we find ourselves in deep trouble.  We rarely keep them: “If only you get me out of this hospital whole, I will serve you.”  How many times have we heard this without anything coming of it?