Free Easter Resources: For Personal Devotion or Lesson Preparation

Here’s one for all you procrastinators. My hope is that this post will serve you, your family, and your church in making much of King Jesus this Easter.

The Gospel Project

The writers of The Gospel Project have provided a lesson on The Resurrection and Exaltation of King Jesus. Below are the PDF versions of this session in both Adult and Student Leader Guide and Personal Study Guide.

• Adult Leader Guide
• Adult Personal Study Guide
• Student Leader Guide
• Student Personal Study Guide

Gospel Centered Discipleship

Jonathan Dodson and Brad Watson have written an excellent free e-book titled Raised: Doubting the Resurrection. The authors write: “We wrote this book out of our love for skeptics and respect for the questions they help us ask. We also write as believers who oscillate in real belief in the resurrected Christ. We hope it proves to be an insightful, stirring reflection on the resurrection.” You can download it below.

• Raised: Doubting the Resurrection? 

Desiring God

Desiring God has provided eight biblical devotions to prepare for Easter. 

• Introduction
• First Reading
• Second Reading
• Third Reading
• Fourth Reading
• Fifth Reading
• Sixth Reading
• Seventh Reading
• Eighth Reading
• Some Words of the Season

They have also provided definitions for some words of the season

1. Holiday: From a combination of two Old English words, halig + daeg—holy day; day set apart for special religious observance.
2. Lent: From an Old English word related to lengthen. It meant springtime, when the days are lengthening. Now we use it to refer to the days between Ash Wednesday and Easter.
3. Ash Wednesday: In the Bible, ashes are a sign of mourning, an appropriate symbol as we think of our part in the death of our Lord.
4. Maundy Thursday: The night when we look back to the Lord’s Last Supper gets its name from the Latin word mandatum—commandment, remembering Jesus’ words to the Apostles during the Last Supper, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34).
5. Good Friday: This worst day in history is also good because of the reconciliation that comes through the cross.

Tim Keller

A few years ago Tim Keller wrote an article for Relevant Magazine on the Resurrection. In the article Keller writes:

Jesus had risen, just as He told them He would. After a criminal does his time in jail and fully satisfies the sentence, the law has no more claim on him and he walks out free. Jesus Christ came to pay the penalty for our sins. That was an infinite sentence, but He must have satisfied it fully, because on Easter Sunday He walked out free. The resurrection was God’s way of stamping PAID IN FULL right across history so that nobody could miss it.

• Read the whole thing here: Tim Keller on the Resurrection 

Keller also wrote an article titled The Resurrection and Christian Mission, in which he argues:

Christians move out into a violent world as agents of peace, into a broken world as agents of reconciliation, into a needy world as servants of the poor. We do so knowing that it is God’s will to eventually end all war and division, all poverty and injustice. The resurrection of Christ assures us that God will redeem not just souls but bodies, and will bring about a new heavens and new earth. As the risen Christ, he stands not just with us in our present time, but he waits at the end of history to heal and renew everything. That is his promise. Therefore, we will not fear.

• Read the whole thing here: The Resurrection and Christian Mission