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I love Hosea 14:8, “O Ephraim, what more have I to do
with idols? It is I who answer and look after you. I am like a
luxuriant cypress; from Me comes your fruit.” God says, “From
Me comes fruit.” So, we want to talk about the origin. Since
you’ve been a Christian, everything that you did in your own
strength profits nothing. It means nothing. That’s why we
started with the vine and the branch. Jesus said, “Without Me
you can do nothing.” But there is a lot I can do without Him;
but nothing that is called “fruit”. I need to abide in Him to have
fruit.
I want to give three illustrations to show the idea of the
origin of our life. Colossians 2:6&7, “As you therefore have
received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been
firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in
your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with
gratitude.” The Lord Jesus is called our soil. We are rooted in
Him. What soil is to a plant, Jesus is to us. The plant draws
from the soil and produces.
Another illustration is Isaiah 37:31, “And the surviving
remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward
and bear fruit upward.” If you bear fruit upward, you bear root
downward.
In the first illustration Jesus is like soil. John 15:4&5,
“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of
itself, unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you
abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides
in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you
can do nothing.” The soil is the source of the vine. The vine is
the source of the grape.
Romans 7:2-4, “For the married woman is bound by law
to her husband while he is living; but if her husband dies, she is
released from the law concerning the husband. So then if, while
her husband is living, she is joined to another man, she shall be
called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the
law, so that she is not an adulteress, though she is joined to
another man. Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to
die to the Law through the body of Christ, that you might be
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