Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Why Do You Thank God? | New Testament | Luke 17

Episode Date: April 11, 2023

Are you quick to count your blessings? It's easy to ask God for things, but it's harder to thank him. In today's episode, Tanya looks to Luke 17 to share the reasons God gives you to thank him. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Luke 17

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmuth. So do you count your blessings? Well, everyone listening to this podcast has reason to give thanks to God. We woke up. We have iTunes or maybe Spotify. We have ears to hear. We made it through another season. We have work or responsibility to tackle today. Sometimes you have moments in your life that make you realize how thankful you are. and sometimes it's because you realize how fragile you really are. I have a vivid memory of our family on vacation with our youngest. She was walking just a little bit ahead of us and it was a really busy sidewalk. We were in a foreign country, so traffic was coming toward us kind of in the same lane. And all of a sudden, I saw a bus coming down the lane and five-year-old Ashby straddling the curb with one foot on the sidewalk and one foot on the road.

And I shrieked. My husband saw the same thing and lunged for our guard. grabbed her out of the way, thank goodness. Did I stop to thank God she wasn't hit by a bus? Of course. Do I thank him all the time for all the things he prevents and all the things he gives? Of course not. Well, I don't think I really even stopped to notice a lot of them. In Luke 17, Jesus asks, We're not ten cleansed. Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? See, the ungratefulness of the nine lepers cleansed by Jesus stounds out to us as we read this chapter,

because it seems shocking that only one of them came back to Jesus to say thank you. I mean, after all, this was probably the most dreaded disease of the time. It was life-changing, forcing people into social outcast and taking away not only their home and family, but gradually eating away at their flesh and their limbs. There was no cure. People could get better for a time, but the disease never really left the body, So once you had it, it was like a life sentence. So on this day, when Jesus entered this village, there were ten lepers standing

away off, and as they were accustomed to doing, they yelled out, Jesus, master, have mercy on us. And when Jesus saw them and heard them, he responded. He said, go and show yourselves to the priests. Jesus wasn't deferring responsibility here. The leopards would have understood exactly what these instructions meant. see, to show yourself to the priest was to receive confirmation that you were cleansed. The priest was the one who had the authority to look at the person with leprosy and change their status from outcast to re-entry.

It was on their way toward the priest that these lepers began to be cleansed. And one, realizing what had happened, Walt turned and ran back to Jesus, praising him with a loud voice, falling in his feet and giving him thanks. Why didn't the other nine come running back also? I don't know. Maybe they had something they thought they had to do first. Maybe they thought they should make sure the priests pronounced them cleansed. Maybe they were already thinking about their family.

Maybe they were going to come back later. Most of us find it easy to ask God for things. But will we go on our way or will we turn around and fall at Jesus' feet like the Samaritan? We aren't all blessed in the same ways. But we are all blessed in some ways by God. Do we notice them? Do we tell him thank you? Is gratitude toward God a rhythm in our lives?

And the good news is that it can be. Is feeling anxious a rhythm? Is worry? When those thoughts of what if come into your mind, you can stop and tell God thank you for what actually has or has not happened. Lord, you actually know the number of hairs on my child's head. Thank you for protecting her all. of these days. Lord, you are slow to anger and rich in compassion. Thank you for making sure I never

experience rejection in your presence. When the Samaritan returned to Jesus with praise, it prompted Jesus to say, your faith has made you well. And also, where are the nine? Now that statement, your faith has made you well might be something we skip over at the end of an action pack chapter, but let's dig a little harder. Because on the flip side, there's some, something about what this thank you was not that's also important to consider. In the culture of this day, a verbal thank you was actually not the proper way to tell someone how much you appreciated them. See, it was an honor, shame society, and when someone did something for you, you wouldn't

run to them and fall at their feet. But you would wait for an opportunity to thank them in a way that would outshine what they had done for you. If you came back to someone and merely said, thank you, well, that would end the give and take relationship and you wouldn't be the winner. It would also imply that you had nothing to offer as you were accepting the assistance or kindness and humility without trying to repay it. Is this hard for you to do? Do you accept help only to make sure you pay it back and show that you are actually adequate, at least some of the time? See, when the one leper came running back to Jesus,

not only was he thinking on Jesus highly, but he was thinking on. himself lowly, humbly. Instead of clinging to his cultural pride, this one was admitting his weakness when he ran back to Jesus' feet. He knew he couldn't repay his Savior's merciful gift of healing. In the cultural back and forth, the Samaritan was saying, Jesus, you won. You are the master, the king, the Savior. It is pointless to try to stand on my own honor. It is pointless to try to repay you. When we come to God to say thank you, we're doing more than giving over a laundry list of blessings. We're putting an end to the ways we try to seek our own honor and depend on ourselves. We're admitting that we have nothing to offer for our salvation. We are humbly acknowledging

that God has given us more than we could ever repay. So our gratitude will it's outward and inward. outwardly it reveals what Jesus has done to cleanse our hearts inwardly the more we practice gratitude the more aware we are of who our true Savior is and who it's not want to be more humble be more grateful be the Samaritan kind of grateful the accepting in weakness kind of grateful I've been reading over this passage for the last couple of days, and I keep having a funny thought coming to my head, which is, whoops, I'm being like one of the nine.

This is how the Holy Spirit is using this passage to remind me and work in me. Whoops, where are you acting and feeling like the other nine? I love that Jesus asks, where are the nine? Well, what can you do instead? Well, we can remember that we have a Savior that loves us and delights to hear from us, having nothing to offer right now but ourselves. He's ready. If you have nothing to offer, he is ready.

Tell him thank you for even prompting you to want to turn to him. And if you want to go further, here's a verse from Mark 9 that I like to pray, when I feel weak and needy. Lord, I believe, help me in my unbelief. We could admit our weakness and even our lack of faith to Jesus. But what I also love about this verse is that it's full of weakness and hope. It's thanking Jesus and also admitting where we are. I hope this is how we approach our Savior.

Lord, we believe, help us in our unbelief. Amen. Before you forget, sign up for the brand new TMBT newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday that will help you beat the midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.