April 15, 2009

Faith Kids: Easter Sunday

Story
Jesus comes to earth to die for our sins, and rises from the dead.

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

What We Did
1. We basically told the entire story of the Bible. We had two punching bags covered with bedsheets. As we told the story, we attached cards to each punching bag to show what they stood for. One punching bag was covered in a white sheet and it stood for God. We talked about how God is love and God is life. He made a perfect world and gave life and love to the people he put on it. But they disobeyed God, and sin and death entered the world. That's what our second punching bag, the one covered with the dark sheet stood for.
     Sin leads to death. Sin and death are the opposite of love and life. After the first people sinned, people kept on sinning and people kept on dying. Finally, God sent Jesus to save us from sin and death. Since Jesus is God, he was full of life and love and offered both to those who'd follow and believe in him. But some people, who were full of sin and death, didn't like what Jesus had to say, and when they couldn't shut him up, they had him killed.
     It looked like sin and death had one and God, full of life and love, had lost. But Jesus was much stronger than sin and death, and though he was killed on a Friday, he rose from the dead on a Sunday. He beat sin and death (at this point, we gave the "Sin and death" punching bag quite a kick!) because God is much stronger than either of them. And we can leave sin and death behind, too, if we believe that Jesus died to take the punishment for the sins we've committed and follow him.
     We finally talked about how God will one day make a new heaven and a new earth, and sin and death will be no more. For those who believe in and follow Jesus, we'll spend forever enjoying God's life and God's love.
2. We played a game where we drew popsicle sticks from a jar. There were seven sticks, each with a day of the week written on it. The person who drew the "Friday" popsicle stick ended up stuck in "sin and death" (the center of the circle), since Jesus died on a Friday. He/she then had to find the kid with the "Sunday" stick in order to leave "sin and death" and receive God's "love and life," since Jesus was raised on a Sunday.

Materials We Used
1. Lesson Plan
2. Game

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