Fruits of the Spirit

This free Bible lesson, Fruits of the Spirit, will teach preschool and elementary students about the fruits the Holy Spirit produces in Christians as described in Galatians 5:22-23.

FOCUS BIBLE PASSAGE: Galatians 5:13-26

This lesson comes from the Seeds of Truth Elementary Bible Curriculum that is free to anyone looking for ideas to "plant seeds" into the hearts of children as they are learning about Jesus. Find more details HERE.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Seeds of Truth podcast, where seeds of biblical truth are planted into the hearts and minds of listeners so they can grow into a relationship with Jesus. I'm your host, Miss Dana. Thank you for joining me today. Let's get started. Hello, friends, and welcome back. Today, before we get into our Bible lesson, I want you to think about and visualize some fruits that you love. What kind of fruits do you love? There are many types of fruit in the world, but today we are going to learn about the most important fruit of all, and it's called the fruit of the spirit. You can't eat this fruit or grow it in a garden. The fruit of the spirit is something that grows in your life with the Holy Spirit's help. The Holy Spirit is God. He lives inside Christians or people who trust Jesus to save them from sin. And the Holy Spirit helps us to follow Jesus. Fruit is something that grows, just like all of the great qualities listed in today's lesson. And those are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We can produce this kind of fruit on our own. Remember, we are born sinners because of Adam and Eve's disobedience in the Garden of Eden. Our hearts naturally want to sin by disobeying God. Sin is like bad fruit in our lives that grows from our sinful hearts. So some sinful things that might be in our lives, lying, cheating, stealing, disobeying parents and teachers, saying bad things, those types of things. But the good news is that Jesus died and rose again to save us from our sin. When you trust in Jesus to save you from sin, the Holy Spirit comes to live inside of you to help you grow good fruit, like those that I mentioned before: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We need the help of the Holy Spirit to grow this special kind of fruit in our lives. And we can get the Holy Spirit's help by trusting in Jesus and asking him to save us from sin. So I'm going to read you a passage from the book of Galatians. And the writer of this passage is the Apostle Paul. Paul was a follower of Jesus who wrote most of the New Testament of our Bible. And many of his writings teach us how to live like Jesus. So Paul wrote in Galatians chapter 5, verses 13 through 16. Serve one another in love. The whole law is fulfilled by obeying this one command. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. If you say or do things that harm one another, watch out. You could end up destroying one another. So I say, live by the Holy Spirit's power. Then you will not do what your desires, controlled by sin, want you to do. So Paul is saying the one command that we should follow is to love your neighbor as yourself. What does that mean? Love your neighbor as you love yourself is one of the laws that God told Moses to give to the people, way back in the Old Testament book of Leviticus. Leviticus chapter 19, verse 18 says, Do not try to get even, do not hold anything against any of your people. Instead, love your neighbor as you love yourself. I am the Lord. God wants us to love other people as much as we love ourselves. Is it difficult to love others sometimes? Sometimes it is hard to love others because our sin nature causes us to be selfish and only care about ourselves and our own wants and desires. But the Bible tells us that with the help of the Holy Spirit's power, we can learn to go against our own sinfulness and live like God wants us to live. So how do we get the Holy Spirit's power? We get the Holy Spirit's power by trusting in Jesus and asking him to save us from our sins. When we trust in Jesus and ask him to save us from our sins, he sends the Holy Spirit to live inside of us. The Holy Spirit never leaves us and is always with us, guiding us and helping us. This passage continues with Paul teaching us about how our sin is the opposite of what God wants for our lives. So Galatians chapter 5, verse 17 says, the desires controlled by sin do not want what the spirit delights in. And the spirit does not want what the desires controlled by sin delight in. The two are at war with each other. That's why you are not supposed to do whatever you want. So remember, we're born sinners because of Adam and Eve's disobedience in the Garden of Eden. Sin was brought into the world when they disobeyed, and we are all born sinners because of that. Paul tells us in this passage that sin makes us want things that are opposite of what God wants for our lives. Opposite means different or not the same. Paul says that what we want and what the Holy Spirit of God want are at war with each other. He says that is why we shouldn't do whatever we want. Does that mean that everything you want or want to do is wrong? No, this doesn't mean that everything that you want or want to do is wrong. It means that as a person born with a sinful heart, you will have times in your life that you want something or you want to do something that is opposite of what God wants for your life. So who can help you learn what God wants for your life? The Holy Spirit. He will help you learn what God wants for your life. Some things that you can do to help you learn what God wants for your life. You can pray and ask him what he wants for your life. You can read the Bible. The Holy Spirit will guide you as you read the Bible. You can go to church to learn more about Jesus. You can talk to trusted adults about your questions. So in the next part of the passage, Paul teaches us about sin in our lives and how it tries to control our hearts. So this is from Galatians chapter 5, verses 19 through 21. The Bible says the result of sin's control in our lives is clear. It includes impure acts and wild living. It includes worshiping other gods and evil powers. It also includes hatred and fighting, jealousy, and fits of anger. Sinful desire is interested only in getting ahead. It stirs up trouble. It separates people. People who live like this will not receive God's kingdom. So this passage talks about many different types of sins that people commit. Paul is teaching in this passage that any sin in our lives can control us in a bad way. He says that we should not let sin control us. And who do we need to help us if we don't want to let sin control us? The Holy Spirit. And remember, we can get the Holy Spirit by asking Jesus to save us. So the next verse in this passage is what this whole lesson is about. And this is Galatians chapter 5, verses 22 through 23. And it says, The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law. So what is Paul teaching us in this passage? Paul is teaching us that we can't be good enough or try hard enough to produce these fruits on our own, but the Holy Spirit can help us grow to be more like Jesus as He produces the fruit in our lives. And that fruit is the love, the joy, the peace, the patience, the kindness, the goodness, the faithfulness, the gentleness, and the self-control. All of these things are character traits that are like Jesus. So when we have those fruits of the Spirit, we can become more like Jesus. So think about an actual fruit tree. If the apples or the oranges or whatever type of fruit growing on the tree is healthy, what do you know about the health of the tree? Well, a healthy tree means that it has good roots. It is being watered, it is getting sunlight and it's being taken care of. So how can we relate these things to our own lives? If our lives have good roots, that can mean that we are very solid and we know how to follow Jesus. If we are watering our lives and getting sunlight, that can mean that we are reading our Bible. We're going to church, we're making good friendships with other people who love Jesus. All of those things are like giving our lives the water and the sunlight that we need to be able to grow. Our lives should be very different after we have trusted Jesus to save us from sin. God wants us to grow fruit in our lives that shows we know Him and love Him. Just like a fruit tree, others should be able to see a difference in people who love and follow Jesus because of the good fruit that is in that person's life. How much fruit can you grow by yourself? None. We cannot grow fruit by ourselves. It is called the fruit of the Spirit because God's Holy Spirit is who gives it to us. When we trust Jesus and ask him to save us, who does he send to live inside of us? The Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes to live inside of people who love Jesus, who follow Jesus, and who ask Jesus to save them from sin. And the Holy Spirit helps that person to live like Jesus. The Holy Spirit helps us to live like Jesus. Let's pray. Dear God, thank you for your word, the Bible, that you gave us to help us learn how to live like and follow Jesus. Thank you for the passage about the fruit of the Spirit that we learned about today. Please help us to remember that you want to produce these fruits in our lives and our hearts. Help us to grow and be more like Jesus every day. Please continue to bless our time together as we praise you for all of the wonderful things you do for us. We love you and we pray all of these things in Jesus' sweet name. Amen. Until next time, friend, God bless. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Seeds of Truth Podcast. For more free Bible resources, visit Seeds of Truth Ministries.com.