Children’s Sermon

Luke 6:17-26

Crowds and Crowds and Crowds

By Dr. Carol J Miller

NOTE: If you are not sure how many people your sanctuary holds, ask someone at your church who is sure. That number goes in where the “X” is in the first sentence.

Have you ever been in a big crowd? I mean a really big crowd. We could get about X number of people into this sanctuary. Jesus sometimes had 4000 or 5000 people in the crowds that followed him! That’s a lot of people! I bet they caused traffic jams just from people walking this way and that way trying to get closer to Jesus.

One day there was a very big crowd of people all waiting for Jesus to come. When Jesus saw all the people, he knew what they wanted, and he was happy to give it to them. They wanted to hear his words about God–– and many of them were sick and wanted to get well.

Some people in the crowd had physical diseases––some had mental illnesses––some may have gotten hurt in accidents. Luke tells us that people were trying to touch him because they felt the power of his healing even by touching him!

Here’s a question for you: Do you think Jesus knew all these people? Huge crowds gathered wherever he went. Once the crowds, trying to get close, almost pushed him into the lake! Once so many crowded into his house that nobody could get in or out! So do you think Jesus knew all these thousands of people? (Accept all answers). I don’t think he could have known them all. But whether he knew them or not, Jesus healed the people who came to him.

When Jesus did not know the people, he did not know if they had been doing what God wanted or not. He didn’t know whether they were good people or not. But it didn’t seem to matter. Jesus healed them all. Jesus cured everyone who came to see him.

God loves us all the time no matter what we’ve done. God gives his love to everyone. Once Jesus was talking about God and he said “For [God] makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5:45).

God is good to everybody not just the people who do nice things. God loves all of us, all the time. It makes God unhappy when we do bad things, but God still loves us. God’s love is very strong, Think about that. Talk to your mom or dad about God’s love, ask them some questions. It is an important thing to think about, because God’s love is wonderful, and God loves you.

Scripture quotations from the World English Bible