Thank You For Saving Me

Today, we continue on the theme of giving thanks. Yesterday, we looked at Psalm 100 and how giving thanks and praise are tied together. We looked at some of the things to be thankful for: mainly for God's love and faithfulness to us. Today, we are going to look at the story of Anna, one of the people who got to see baby Jesus, when Mary and Joseph brought him to the temple.

³⁶There was also a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, ³⁷and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. ³⁸Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.

Luke 2:36-38

• The original language for the New Testament is Greek (not the Hebrew we're used to from the Old Testament. The word used in verse 38 for giving thanks is anthomologeomai. This word means "to acknowledge fully, to celebrate fully in praise with thanksgiving." This long word is actually a compound word in the Greek - anti and homologeō which itself is a compound of homou and logos - which in it's parts mean "because of," "together," and "word." homologeō by itself means to agree, to praise and to celebrate. The prefix anti (though in other cases it could mean what we think of in English) means "because of." In other words, as Anna is giving thanks and praising, she is recognizing that it is because of Jesus that she is giving thanks.


• What is Anna thankful for? the redemption of Jerusalem


• The word for redemption - lytrōsis - means "deliverance, esp. from the penalty of sin"
• Jerusalem can be taken to mean the people of Israel, God's people
• Anna recognized that baby Jesus was going to deliver God's people from the penalty of their sin. She had been waiting all of her life for this and was excited that it had finally arrived.
• Are you thankful that Jesus has delivered you from the penalty of your sin?
• Are you glad you didn't have to wait all of your life for it?
• If we know that Jesus has delivered us from the penalty of our sin, what should we do?