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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