A Children's Sermon on a Difficult Command

Each month, my fellow pastor or I give a children's sermon on the memory passage of that month. This month, our children and families are memorizing Luke 14:26-27, 33. After they had gathered around me yesterday, we quoted the difficult words below together. As I asked the Lord to help me explain these words to the children, I offered the following short message.

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple…So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

Children, did you hear that? Jesus said if you do not hate your own father and mother, you cannot be His disciple. He said the same about your brothers and sisters. Wait a minute! We are always telling you to honor your father and mother and to love them. We want you to love your brothers and sisters. So what does Jesus mean by saying that we have to hate them? Let me try to give you a picture to help.

I have a question or two for you. Would you like it if you woke up this morning and found mice and rats crawling all over you and your bed? What if you ran into the kitchen to tell your mommy, sat down at the table to eat breakfast, and mice and rats were crawling all over your breakfast? Would you like that? No! Your homes were not made to have mice and rats living in them! You would need to get rid of those mice and rats.

(At this point, I pulled a mousetrap out of a bag with a stick, as a young boy was telling us how he tried to catch a mouse, but it was too fast.)

What is this? That's right, it is a mousetrap. We live near the woods, and I always use poison or traps to keep the mice out of our house. This trap works by putting seed in the cup, pushing the spring down to set it, and then placing it where mice run. Pretend this stick is the mouse. Now, don't jump when the trap goes off. If a mouse smells the seed, comes close to eat some, and touches the pedal, then POW! I told you not to jump! 

Children, your heart is like your home. Your heart is made to love God the Father, Jesus His Son, and the Holy Spirit above all else. If you start letting love for other things, even wonderful things, be greater than your love for God, it is like allowing the mice and rats of sin to come into your heart. Or if your brother or sister tells you to do something naughty, and you listen to them, it's like letting a mouse of sin run around in your heart. Jesus says you have to hate those sins and put those sins to death. How?

The reason that we love Jesus more than anyone else is that He died on the cross to put our sins to death. Like a mousetrap killing mice, the cross of Jesus helps us to put to death false loves.  

Who are we here to worship today? That's right. God. Now, this would never happen, but if your dad tried to act like King Nebuchadnezzar for a moment, stood up in front of the church, and said, "Worship me!" would you do that? No! But sometimes in our hearts, if we are not careful, we can worship, serve, or follow our mom and dad, or brothers or sisters, by loving them more than God, listening to them instead of God, or wanting to be with them instead of God. We cannot let those mice and rats of sin run around in our hearts! That's when we need the cross to show we are Christ's disciples.

Let us now pray the Lord will help us hate our sins.