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THIS WEEK’S PASSAGE ISAIAH 53
PREPARATION
You’ll need blank bingo-style sheets (ten empty boxes on a sheet of A4), pens, small chocolate prizes and Bibles. For the Prophecy match-up race, create individual slips of paper with each of the verse references on them. The prophecy verses should be numbered, the fulfilment verses should be lettered (A-F). There should be one envelope containing both sets of verses, per group.
PREDINGO!
10 mins
(If you hate made-up composite words, this game is called ‘Prediction Bingo’). Choose a confident volunteer who is fairly well-known to most of the group. Now explain that this person is going to spend 90 seconds talking about their experience of Christmas Day last year. Don’t give them any prompts at all about what they might say, but take them outside your meeting room and give them a couple of minutes to quickly make some notes. While they’re doing that, give out the bingo sheets and explain to the rest of the group that everyone is going to try to guess ten words or phrases that your volunteer might use during their story. They should write one word or phrase in each box on the sheet.
Bring your volunteer back in, and get them to talk for 90 seconds. The rest of the group should mark off any phrases which the volunteer uses – if they get all ten they should shout PREDINGO! Give a prize to the winner and to the volunteer for working so hard.
KEY POINT
It’s very difficult to predict the future. In this session, we’re going to see how Jesus’ time on earth was correctly predicted by many people, in many ways, over many years.
PROPHECY MATCH-UP RACE
10 mins
Divide into groups, and give each group an envelope containing the prophecy and fulfilment Bible verses. Explain that the birth and early life of Jesus was predicted – with incredible accuracy – throughout the Old Testament. Our challenge now is to match up the original predictions (from hundreds of years before Jesus was born) with the moment in the New Testament when they come true. Each group has to race through the Bible, reading the verses and matching up the prophecies with the reality. The first group to hand you a correct list wins.
The prophecies:
1. Jesus will be born in Bethlehem. Prophecy – Micah 5:2. Fulfilled – Luke 2:4–7.
2. The saviour of the world will come from the line of Abraham. Prophecy – Genesis 12:2-3. Fulfilled – Matthew 1:1.
3. Jesus will emerge from Egypt. Prophecy – Hosea 11:1. Fulfilled – Matthew 2:13–15.
4. Jesus will be born of a virgin. Prophecy – Isaiah 7:14. Fulfilled – Matthew 1: 18–23.
5. Jesus will enter the temple. Prophecy – Malachi 3:1. Fulfilled: Luke 2:25–27. (NB: This put a time limit on Jesus as the temple was destroyed around ad 70.)
6. When Jesus is born there will be great suffering and much weeping. Prophecy – Jeremiah 31:15. Fulfilled – Matthew 2:16.
Say: These are just a few of the many prophecies which Jesus fulfilled during his time on earth. In fact, scholars believe that over 300 Old Testament predictions about Jesus came true during his life – an impossible thing for him to have faked.
KEY POINT
Jesus’ fulfillment of prophecy is vitally important – it’s one of the key ways that we know he wasn’t just a good or clever teacher. The chances of a man being able to fulfill these prophecies (which include family line and place of birth) is somewhere around one in a billion. This is how we know Jesus is who he says he is.
INTO THE TARDIS
5 mins
Split the group into pairs, and hold a brief discussion about time travel. If you could visit yourself five years ago, what advice or information would you pass on? If you could skip five years into the future, what are the things you’d want to know about how things worked out for you? Invite some feedback, then say: While time travel isn’t possible, prophecy is a way that God sometimes allows his people to see into the future. Jesus’ arrival wasn’t a surprise in one sense – the Messiah had been prophesied for generations. But they weren’t expecting this kind of Messiah.
WHAT ISAIAH SAID
15 mins
Split the young people into groups of four or five, and give them Bibles or printed copies of Isaiah 53. Give them a little background: the longer prophecy, written hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth, accurately predicts the very unlikely circumstances of his death. Ask them to read it and then discuss the following questions:
Which elements of the Easter story do you recognise in this prediction?
Imagine reading this at the time it was written. What do you think it would have meant to you?
Isaiah takes one verse to predict Jesus’ birth (7:14) but a whole chapter talking about his death. Why do you think that is?
How do you feel about the Christmas story when you read this prophecy?
KEY POINT
Christmas and Easter – Jesus’ birth, death and resurrection – are all part of the same story. Jesus came into the world not so people could crown him as king, but so that he could save them through his own death. He was born to die.
REFLECTION
5 mins
Invite everyone to find some space. Give out pens and paper, and ask that mobile phones are switched off or silenced. The group has two options about how to spend the time – they can either reflect on the passage they’ve just read, and write down anything that strikes them as interesting or important, or they can ask God for the gift of prophecy – for encouraging words for other members of the group. If they choose the latter, they should simply listen for anything that they think God might be trying to say to them, and write it down. Bring the group back together for a short time of feedback, and pray to finish.
