Resurrection Sunday (Easter!) has to be the most wonderful weekend of the year. Christmas is amazing but as Paul said Jesus’ resurrection is THE reason (“And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile…” I Cor. 15:17) we can trust the message of the gospel.
So what follows below is an elementary Sunday School lesson script for you to use resurrection Sunday weekend. Feel free to edit this lesson script and make it your own. I want to provide the inspiration and ideas (like some great Easter Bible Verses for kids) that you can use to teach with the talents and abilities God has given you!
You are one of a kind, so teach like it!!
This lesson is designed to be taught the weekend after my Palm Sunday Lesson.
Resurrection Sunday School Lesson Script:
How many of you like magic tricks? Well, today, we’re going to try a few.
(Without kids seeing, write the word “NO” on an index card or big piece of paper.)
Ask the kids, “does anyone know what I wrote?” they’ll say NO! and you can flip it over to show them that they were right!
Wow! That’s magic! I bet I can show you an even cooler one. Are you ready?
(Pull out a giant marshmallow and put it on a plate.)
I bet, I can make this marshmallow disappear. Ready? Count me down!
(Have the kids count down from 3. When they get to 1, put the marshmallow in your mouth, raise your hands in triumph, and act like you actually made the marshmallow disappear. Bow!)
Last week, we talked about Jesus’ death. He was put in a tomb, and all his friends were super sad because he was dead… but something kind of magical happened. Except it wasn’t exactly magic. It was just Jesus doing what only He could have done. Let’s open up John 20.
Early in the morning on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone was moved away from the entrance. She ran at once to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, breathlessly panting. “They took the Master from the tomb! We don’t know where they’ve put him.”
So, Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb where Jesus was, mostly because she wants to put spices on him so he doesn’t start smelling like… well, like a dead guy. She gets there, she looks inside, and BAM. Nobody’s there. He disappeared! Just like my marshmallow! Okay, maybe not JUST like my marshmallow… This seems a little more legit, doesn’t it? So Jesus disappears, and Mary runs back to Simon Peter and tells him she can’t find Jesus, and I’m sure he laughed at her. “Oh, where was the last place you put Him?”
Well, ok maybe he didn’t say exactly that!
So they all go to the tomb together.
Mary stood outside the tomb weeping. As she wept, she knelt to look into the tomb and saw two angels sitting there, dressed in white, one at the head, the other at the foot of where Jesus’s body had been laid. They said to her, “Woman, why do you weep?”
“They took my Master,” she said, “and I don’t know where they put him.” After she said this, she turned and saw Jesus standing there. But she didn’t recognize him.
“Mary”, He says.
And instantly Mary recognizes the voice.
“Rabboni!” or “Teacher!”
Jesus said, “Don’t cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.”
Mary Magdalene went, telling the news to the disciples. “I saw the Master!” and she told them everything he said to her.
Wait, what? So Jesus goes missing from His tomb, and now He shows up in front of her and is… not dead anymore. Even though everyone just saw Him die the other day. Not only did they see Him die, they buried him! The man was big-time dead, no faking. And now He was standing in front of her… so what does that mean?
That’s right… It means Jesus rose from the dead. That’s pretty amazing, right? But what does it mean for you and for me?
Do any of you know?
Jesus rising from the dead is a huge deal. In fact, you could say that everything Jesus ever did hinges on Him rising from the dead… Do you know why?
Jesus told everyone He was the Son of God. He made all of these claims, and one of them was that He was sent from God—God, who can do anything. He claimed to be able to save us from our sins by dying from us.
But none of that matters if Jesus doesn’t rise from the dead. Jesus proved He had the power to do everything He said, because He had the power nobody else ever had: to defeat death.
If Jesus hadn’t been raised from the dead, death would have proven to be more powerful than Him. It would mean that Jesus wasn’t all that He said He was (1 Cor. 15:17). But Jesus DID rise from the dead, and He proved, once and for all, that He had the power to do anything and everything he said… and that we could trust Him.
So when Jesus says he can move mountains, we can believe Him.
When Jesus says He loves us, we can believe Him.
When Jesus says our sins are forgiven, we can believe Him.
When Jesus says we are now able to be with God, we can believe Him.
When Jesus defeated death, he showed all of us that death isn’t the end of us. That no matter how grim and gloomy life gets, Jesus can defeat it. He showed us that life is greater than death.
Resurrection Sunday Activity:
Objects Needed:
two cardboard boxes, markers, 10 old items (an opened bottle of water, a half-bag of chips, etc, an old book, old shoes, etc), 10 new items (unopened bottle of water, picture frame with the model family still in it, a flower that’s not wilted, a blank notebook, an unsharpened pencil, etc), blindfolds, masking tape
Instructions:
Separate the playing area into two spaces using the masking tape. Separate the students into two teams. Put the box labeled old on one side, and the box labeled new on the other.
Each team will pick one student to be their representative. That student will stand in the middle of their side of the playing field and be blindfolded. The other students will stand behind the playing field.
Mix up the items so that there are five old items and five new items available to each team. At the same time, give each player one item to feel. The blindfolded player will have to try and determine if it is a new item or old item, and toss it in to the right box. If they toss it into the right box, but miss, their team must yell “MISS!” If this happens, they have to find the item and walk it over to the box without taking their blindfold off.
Once the blindfolded players have placed all ten things in the boxes, the team has to correct any mistakes they’ve made. They must remove any items from the wrong box and put them into the right box without using their hands. They have to work together to put the items in the right boxes without using any hands.
The first team to separate the old items from the new items wins!
Lesson Tie-in:
Jesus’ death and resurrection gives us the opportunity to have new life, a life that never ends by spending eternity with Jesus in heaven. Let’s have a little fun with the idea of something “new” and see if you can figure out what items are new and which aren’t.
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