HOL-EASTER

"Jesus Conquers Death”

Big Idea

God's Son, Jesus, beat sin and death.

 

Materials Needed:

Two boppin' bags,   Two bedsheets (one black, one white),   Pieces of paper cut in half (With a marker in large print, write the following words each on their own half-sheet of paper: God, Sin, Death, Life, Love, Jesus, Death),   Tape


Setup:

Set the two boppin' bags on opposite sides of the teaching area. Cover them each with a sheet.


Lesson

1. As you teach this lesson, whenever you reference awords written on the sheets you will attach to the boppin' bags, point to them. Explain the following:
    In the beginning, there was only God. (Using tape, attach the sheet of paper with "God" written on it to the boppin' bag covered with the white sheet..) And I mean the real beginning. Before you were born, before I was born, before anyone was born. Before there were plants and animals, mountains and oceans. Before planet earth, or the sun, moon, and stars, there was only God. And God was life (Attach the "Life" sheet to the "God" boppin bag.) and God was love. (Attach the "Love" sheet to the "God" boppin bag.)
    God decided to create people, to give them his life and show them his love. So he created everything we see: the sun, the moon, the stars, and our planet, Earth. He filled the earth with water and land, with plants and animals. And after he had made the perfect place to live, he made the first two people, a man and a woman, and placed them in a beautiful garden in the middle of his perfect world.
    And for a while, things were perfect. God, the man, and the woman enjoyed the world God had created. They walked together, they talked together. And God loved them and they loved God. And that is exactly what God wanted them to do.  Because he loved them, he wanted them to live forever with him and enjoy him and the perfect world he created.
    But then something terrible happened.

2. Explain the following:
    The man and the woman decided to disobey God. God gave them only rule to follow and they broke it. They ate fruit from a tree he told them to not eat from. And that's when a new thing entered God's perfect world: Sin. (Attach the "Sin" sheet to the boppin' bag covered with the black sheet.)
    Sin is when we disobey God. Sin is the opposite of love. The man and the woman had sinned when they didn't follow God's rule. And when they sinned, another thing entered God's now-not-so-perfect world: death. (Attach the "Death" sheet to the "Sin" boppin' bag.)
    Death is the punishment for sin. Just like sin is the opposite of love, death is the opposite of life. When the man and the woman God created decided to sin, they also chose to accept the punishment for sin, which is death.

3. Explain the following:
    Because the man and the woman God had created had chosen sin and death over his love and life, he them leave the beautiful garden he had created in the middle of his perfect world and sent them out into the world.
    But this world was no longer perfect. This world was full of sin, and where you find sin, you find death. That meant the man and the woman would die someday. And the plants around them would die someday. And so would the animals. And so would their children.
    And that's what happened. People kept sinning and people kept dying. The man and woman eventually died. Their children eventually died. And so did their children's children, and their children after them. People kept sinning, and people kept dying. And that's the way it went for thousands of years.
    And this broke God's heart. God was full of love and life, and the world he had made was now full of sin and death. And so he decided to do something about it.

4. Explain the following:
    God decided to come to earth to save us from sin and death. Over 2000 years ago, He came in the person of Jesus, God's Son. (Attach the "Jesus" sheet to the "God" boppin' bag.) Jesus was a normal person, just like you and me. He was born as a baby, he grew up as a kid, and eventually became a full grown man. But Jesus was different from you and me, too. He was God inside of a person's body.
    So Jesus, God in the body of a person, lived on earth with us. He lived in the middle of all of our sin and all of our death. But he didn't join us in our sin and death. Since he was God, he was full of life and love. Everywhere he went, he shared God's life and love with others. He told them that if they followed Him, if they believed in his message, that they, too, could leave behind the sin and the death and receive God's forever life and forever love. And, unlike the first man and woman God made, he never, ever did a single thing wrong.
    But some people, who were still full of sin and death, didn't like what Jesus had to say. They tried to make him be quiet. They tried to keep others from following and believing in Jesus. But no matter what they tried, they couldn't keep people from following and listening to Jesus and his message of love and life. And since they were full of sin, they decided to put him to death. They killed Jesus by nailing him to a large wooden cross on a Friday. When he was dead, they buried Jesus in a cold, stone grave. (Attach the other "Death" sheet to the "God" boppin' bag.)
    It looked as though sin and death were winning. It looked as though God had lost. It looked as though we were going to be trapped in a world full of sin and death forever.

5. Explain the following:
    But although sin and death are strong, God, full of love and life, is stronger. Since Jesus was God inside of a human body, not even sin and death could stop him. He took our punishment for sin and died, even though he didn't do anything to deserve it. He died to conquer our sin and death with his love and live.
    Although Jesus had died on a Friday, God raised him from the dead on a Sunday. He came back to life and showed himself to all those who followed him. And when God raised Jesus, God's love and life defeated sin and death. (Give the "Sin" boppin' bag a really good kick.)
    Jesus, God's perfect Son, God inside of a human body, not only paid our punishment for sin by dying for us, he rose again, beating sin and death. (Give the "Sin" boppin' bag another really good kick.)
    Now, you may look around you and think, "I still see people disobeying God. And people still die. It doesn't look like Jesus beat sin and death!" It's true, the world God made is still full of sin and death. But now, because of Jesus, it doesn't have to be. If we decide to follow Jesus, if we believe that he died because of our sin on a Friday, if we believe that God raised him from the dead on a Sunday, and if we choose to follow Jesus and do what he asks us to do, God will remove our sin. And even though we may die one day just like Jesus did, God will also raise us up again like Jesus to live with him in heaven. If you tell God those things and truly believe them, you'll no longer have to worry about sin and death. Instead, you can be full of God's life and love. If you've never told God those things and truly believed him, you be stuck forever with the sin and death that this world is full of.
    And the Bible says that one day, God will make a brand new Earth. And this Earth will be just as perfect as the first one he made. And those who believed in and followed Jesus will spend forever with God, walking with him, talking with him, and enjoying him forever.