Here’s a free lesson and game on Easter for your youth group.

The big idea of the lesson: On Easter, we celebrate the new covenant brought by Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins.

Enjoy!

– The Ministry to Youth Team

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Writer: Kaleigh Welch

Bible Verses: Jeremiah 31:31-32, 34, Hebrews 9:11-14, Hebrews 4:15-16

Bottom Line: On Easter, we celebrate the new covenant brought by Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins.

SUPPLIES

Game Supplies:

  • White board or poster board to keep track of team scores
  • Bible trivia questions/answers
  • Paper and pens/pencils for teams to write their answers

OPENING GAME: EASTER TRIVIA

Game Setup:

This is bible trivia about the Easter story, but with a secret twist – no matter how many questions a team gets wrong, they still score points, i.e., there are no “mistakes”.

THIS MUST BE KEPT A SECRET FROM THE PLAYERS as it has to do with the lesson later on, so please make sure all your leaders are in on it and play along.

Students will eventually catch on that everyone is earning the same points no matter what but try to keep it going without giving it away. 😊

For set up, have stacks of paper and writing utensils set out for at least 2 teams depending on group size.

At the front, have the whiteboard or poster board to keep score and fill it out with team names, leaving a column to keep track of points via tally marks.

Have the trivia questions and answers printed out if you want (they will be below as well) and use a microphone or megaphone to lead the trivia if desired. Use your phone or a timer to keep time.

How to Play the Game:

Say:

  • “Alright everyone! We are going to play a good old-fashioned game of bible trivia, all about the Easter story!”
  • “Get into teams of 4 or 5 and come up with your team name, which will be written on the scoreboard. You have stacks of paper and pens at your table for you to write the answers, and our leaders will go around and verify after each question as you share what your group got. You cannot look at your phones or bibles to answer the questions. Each question your team gets right, you get a point, and you will have 30 seconds to answer each question. The team with the most points at the end wins!”
  • “Question 1: What was the Jewish feast which was being celebrated the week Christ was crucified?”
    • Answer: Passover (Luke 22:1)

[After each question, give the teams 30 seconds to come up with their answer and write it down. Once time is up, go around and have each group share their answer as adult leaders verify it on their papers. Give each team a point but don’t call attention to it and act like it’s normal.]

  • “Question 2: How many times did Peter deny Christ?”
    • Answer: 3 times
  • “Question 3: How did Judas identify Jesus to the soldiers?”
    • Answer: By giving him a kiss
  • “Question 4: How many days after his crucifixion was Jesus resurrected?”
    • Answer: 3 days

[By this point, your students will probably be realizing that you are giving everyone a point even if they get the answer wrong, try to play it off and keep the game going.]

  • “Question 5: How many pieces of silver did Judas receive from the priests for Jesus’ life?”
    • Answer: 30 pieces
  • “Question 6: When Jesus died, darkness came over the land. How long did it last?”
    • Answer: 3 hours
  • “Question 7: Who was the first person to see the risen Christ?”
    • Answer: Mary Magdalene
  • “Question 8: What was used to seal the tomb?”
    • Answer: a stone
  • “Question 9: What was found in the tomb”?
    • Answer: Jesus’ burial clothes/shroud
  • “Question 10: What was written on Jesus’ cross”?
    • Answer: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”

TEACH

Wow, you guys were great at bible trivia! There were some hard questions that would have had me stumped. Now, you are smart people who probably caught on that something wasn’t quite right with how the game was played – can anybody tell me what it was?

[Take answers from the group]

Yes, that’s right. No matter if a group got the answer wrong, their team still received a point for that question. There wasn’t a penalty for a wrong answer or mistake. Even if you weren’t perfect at trivia, you didn’t lose points.

Is that how it usually works? No, right? Normally if you make a mistake on a game, or on a test or homework, you don’t get a point for that. You may even lose points.

We played trivia like that today to remind us about the core truth of the Easter story – through Jesus’ sacrifice, our mistakes don’t count against us. He is perfect when we aren’t.

Let’s dive into what Jesus’ sacrifice means for us.

[Pray if desired]

Around this time each year we celebrate Easter. The story of Easter is included in each of the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, with each telling it a little differently. These books that begin the New Testament are all about Jesus’ life and ministry on earth.

However, to best understand the Easter story, we have to look back at an earlier time in history for God’s people, the Israelites. We will be in the book of Jeremiah in the Old Testament.

Jeremiah was a prophet, which meant that he was a messenger for God to his people. Jeremiah had a really close relationship with God, and would speak with God all the time. He would then tell the Israelites what God needed them to hear.

In the passage we’re about to read, Jeremiah speaks of a covenant God will make with his people. Can anybody tell us what a covenant is?

[Take answers from the group.]

Yes, that’s right – a covenant is a relationship based on promises. When God brought the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to bring them to the Promised Land, he made a covenant with them. God promised to be with His people and bless them if they followed Him and obeyed His commands.

This sounds like a pretty good deal – God loved his people so he promised to be with them and take care of them, and asked his people to follow him.

However, The Israelites frequently messed up and didn’t follow God like they should. But instead of abandoning them, God had set up a sacrificial system so their sins could be atoned for. There are consequences to our actions and when we disobey God.

To receive forgiveness for sins, the priests would sacrifice animals, like goats or pigeons, so their blood could atone for the Israelites’ sins. Because sin has to have consequences, the sacrifice of the animal would happen instead of the punishment being put on God’s people.

The animal took the place of God’s people. And because people aren’t perfect and would continue to make mistakes, sacrifices would continually need to be made.

There were different kinds of sacrificial rituals for different sins or occasions, including the Day of Atonement.

On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest – aka, the head priest – would go into the innermost room of the tabernacle, which was the place of worship for God’s people. In this innermost room was the Ark of the Covenant.

The Ark of the Covenant was a beautiful chest made out of gold that held the Ten Commandments inside, and the Ark is where God’s presence on earth would rest.

Because people can’t be in the full and complete presence of God’s glory, this is where God would be, and once a year the High Priest would enter this innermost room to make a sacrifice on behalf of all God’s people.

This relationship and sacrificial system is the “old covenant” that Jeremiah speaks about in verse 32. Let’s read Jeremiah 31:31-32.

31 ”The day is coming,” says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah.

32 This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant, though I loved them as a husband loves his wife,” says the Lord.

In these verses, God is saying that he will make a new covenant with his people as they have not followed the old one. The Israelites kept on turning away from God and followed other peoples’ false gods even though God remained faithful to them.

God still forgave their sins through the sacrifices the priests made, but God loved the Israelites too much to let them continue on their path of following false gods.

We’ve talked about the old covenant between God and his people, so what is this new covenant? Looking down to verse 34 of this same passage, it says the following:

34 And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying, ‘You should know the Lord.’ For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will know me already,” says the Lord. “And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.”

In this new covenant, God’s people will follow God and their sins will be forgiven in such a way that the sacrifices are no longer continually required – their sins will no longer be remembered.

How is this possible? We know that there have to be consequences for sin.

This is where we fast forward to the Easter story and Jesus! Jesus came to be the sacrifice for everyone’s sins, ours included.

Let’s turn to the New Testament in the book of Hebrews. This is a letter written to early Jewish Christians meant to encourage them in their faith and help remind them that Jesus fulfills the promises made by God to his people.

In this letter, the author of Hebrews quotes passages of Old Testament scripture, including the prophecy we read earlier from Jeremiah.

Jesus is called the “mediator of a new covenant”, and this is the new covenant Jeremiah writes about that will wipe out sin forever.

In Hebrews 9, Jesus is described as our High Priest who sacrificed himself for us. Verses 11-14 say this:

11 So Christ has now become the High Priest over all the good things that have come. He has entered that greater, more perfect Tabernacle in heaven, which was not made by human hands and is not part of this created world.

12  With his own blood—not the blood of goats and calves—he entered the Most Holy Place once for all time and secured our redemption forever.

13 Under the old system, the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer could cleanse people’s bodies from ceremonial impurity.

14 Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our consciences from sinful deeds so that we can worship the living God. For by the power of the eternal Spirit, Christ offered himself to God as a perfect sacrifice for our sins.

When Jesus was crucified and sacrificed himself, he served as our high Priest making a sacrifice for our sins. But since he never sinned and therefore was perfect, his blood was able to purify us for all of time, instead of a temporary fix that would have to be done again.

Jesus willingly died so that we could be forgiven, and then have a restored relationship with God under the new covenant. We aren’t perfect and we will continue to sin, even if we follow God. But Jesus is perfect and so we are forgiven.

And not only are we forgiven, but we can boldly approach God. God isn’t distant and far away, watching us and waiting for us to mess up. He loves us and wants to have a relationship with us, which is why he sent Jesus.

Hebrews 4:15-16 says the following:

15 This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin.

16 So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.

Jesus understands us. And because of his sacrifice, we aren’t separated from God by sin, but can approach God to receive his mercy and grace.

If you choose to follow Jesus as your Savior, you are under this new covenant. Even though we aren’t perfect, Jesus’ death and resurrection paid the debt for our sins and mistakes and so we are forgiven and have a restored relationship with God. This is what we celebrate on Easter.

[Close in prayer and dismiss to small groups.]

SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  • We heard about how covenants are promises. What are some types of promises we make to people?
  • When we make mistakes, what usually happens? What kind of consequences might there be?
  • Can you think of a time when someone forgave you for a mistake you made? How did that make you feel?
  • What are some ways that we don’t follow God like we should today?
  • Why was Jesus’ sacrifice for us good for all of time?
  • How does it make you feel that Jesus sacrificed himself for you and that you don’t have to be perfect to receive God’s forgiveness?
  • What does it mean to you that we can boldly approach God? What might this look like?
  • What are some ways we can follow God throughout our week?

(End lesson)

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ONE YEAR PASS – For one year save 93% on $1,440 worth of youth group lessons, Bible studies, games, events & more. Only available through March 28!

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Youth Group Lesson on Easter

8 Replies to “FREE LESSON AND GAME ON EASTER”

  1. Lizbeth
    • March 8, 2023

    Great

    Reply
  2. Carol Samuels
    • March 8, 2023

    This lesson is a wonderful, wonderful lesson to teach our Sunday School youth. It is helpful and Word for Word I Can follow it. It is truly a blessing and encouragement for me in [God’s] ministry to the youth. Again, thank you, thank you. God is truly faithful to His word to have us follow Him, that He leads us in His right path (the way we should go) in (His) righteousness. Amen.

    Reply
  3. Jane
    • March 8, 2023

    Interesting

    Reply
  4. Alfra Jeannele Robertson
    • March 12, 2023

    This is Great! I will be using it with my youth. Thank you ❤️

    Reply
  5. Kseniya
    • March 16, 2023

    I used a general knowledge quiz, because I work with non Christian youth. And then shortly told about that with God our mistakes don’t count.

    Reply
  6. Fernando Joe
    • March 20, 2023

    I’m new to NDI for our church
    I’m looking for free lesson books for youth group at church.
    Mindlers, elementary, Youth groups

    Reply
  7. Nelly
    • March 20, 2023

    Thankyou so much. Found this very important for better understanding of the Easter Covenant

    Reply
  8. Elisabet Felipe
    • April 5, 2023

    Thank you so much. A very interesting lesson, one which I am going to use at my youth Sunday morning Class. Blessings

    Reply

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