Our Ability to Obey Is Found In God.

 Jesus could do nothing of himself.

Read that again-  Jesus could do nothing of himself. 

Jesus did not glorify himself. The people wanted Him to glorify Himself. The people expected Him to glorify Himself. The people wanted Him to crown Himself king, or at the very least, let them crown Him king over them. They wanted this miracle working man to work miracles that would give them the life they expected. The trouble with that is that they expected the things of eternal life to be given to them in their temporal existence. They imagined the Messiah to be one who would come and change their temporal life so that they no longer faced hardship in any way. 

When Jesus began to work miracles they knew He had the power to do anything. Once they realize He had the power to do anything, they could not fathom why He wouldn't give them the life of ease they expected. They didn't understand why He could cure a blind man of his blindness but refuse to give that same blind man a life free of hardship in all ways. Why, they asked, did he give the blind man sight only for that blind man to now see the horrific state of his subjugation under the Roman rule, and the hardship of having to find a skill, a trade, a job of some sort to support himself. They wanted their afflictions cured just as the blind, the lame, the demon possessed, and they deemed their affliction the Roman rule over them. They deemed their afflictions the hard labor they had to perform in order to survive. They deem their afflictions the tragedies of life all around them.

Sure, Jesus cured whole towns of sickness, but that didn't prevent others from becoming sick- He did not give anyone he healed a body that would not decay or become feeble with age. The healings were miracles meant to open the eyes of the people to the Son of God, for surely NO OTHER had such power as Jesus, None before him, none when He lived prior to His death, and none when He lived after His death, has ever done the miracles He did. The miracles were the alarm bells to sound in the ears of the people that their redemption was at hand, the way of their salvation had arrived, the surety of their eternal life was made available.  The wakeup call to what was transpiring for all of mankind, took the form of the many miracles of our Savior- they pointed the way. They revealed the truth of the prophecies given in the Scriptures. God's plan for humanity was all there in those Scriptures, and it was coming to pass just as predicted. 

And still… 

Jesus did not do a single miracle on His own, not one.

Jesus could do NOTHING of Himself!

We bemoan our own lives daily lamenting our inability to do the things we want to do, with our minds we want to serve God but then we find our flesh acting contrary to our minds. We are fixated on our ability to obey, to do… fixated on OUR ability. FIXATED ON OUR.

We need to comprehend so completely, and fully that JESUS could do NOTHING of HIMSELF, and therefore WE MOST ASSUREDLY can do NOTHING of OURSELVES. 

We, like Jesus, can only find our ability to do- in GOD!

2Co_3:5  Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God

Joh_5:19  Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.

Joh_8:28  Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things.

(Excerpt)

A.T.Jones

1895 lecture

COME OUT OF HER MY PEOPLE

Our study tonight will be merely a continuation of the lesson of Friday night: What Babylon is, how much it embraces, and what it is to come out of her. We may not get through all of this in this lesson, but from the evidences we had Friday night, it is plain enough that there is nothing else to do but to inform the world of the ruin that hangs over it and to sound aloud the call that God has given to save people from the ruin. The thing for us to do is to lift up the cry, to sound aloud the warning and the call, and the Lord will see to it that the people are convinced that that is the thing to do. Whether they will do it or not is for them to decide afterward. But the Lord will see to it that they shall know that that is the thing to do.

Therefore I stated last night, especially when we read for the first time the words, "I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people," that it is the voice that comes from heaven that calls the people out. And therefore, those human instruments who will make the call by the word of mouth will have to be so connected with God that in that call the people will hear the voice from heaven. We must be so connected with God that when that word is sounded, "Come out of her, my people," the Spirit of God will say to them, That is the thing to do. Those who will give the warning must be so connected with God that when the voice shall present the words of God which show the situation as it is at present, the Spirit of God will impress those who hear with the actual conviction that that is the truth, that we are in the time and that the thing to do is to come out of her.

But I say still that whether they will do it or not is for them to decide. God never takes up a man and drags him out.

We have a message to the world now, just as important as that of the apostles back then. And our position is not the right one until we find such a connection with God that when we do speak the truth, wherever we go and tell the people the message that He has now given us to tell, the Spirit of God will be there to witness to the people that that is so, and say to them, That is right and that man is speaking the truth. All that we can do is to tell the message to the people. We cannot bring them out, and God will not bring them out by force. He wins men by telling them what is right and making His goodness pass before them. And this God will do when the human instrument by which He works stands so related to Him that His Spirit can speak in the words, in order that in the human words the people shall hear the "voice from heaven."

I am satisfied that everyone--and I am not satisfied as a mere persuasion but I know it is a fact--everyone who will yield to the truth of God as the Lord reveals it today and as He will reveal it to every man, will be brought by the truth into just the place where the Spirit of God can work with him in this way all the time.

Now we know that for more than two years we have been in the time in which God said, "Arise, shine, for thy light is come." That is the truth, and we all know that we are there. But we cannot raise ourselves. We cannot get up; it is the truth of God that must raise us. The power of God must have a place, and that will raise us. We have to "Arise" before we can "shine"; that is settled. We cannot shine down where we are; we are not in the right place; we must be up. We must arise in order to shine, because up there is where the light is. We are down too close to the earth--Seventh-day Adventists, all of us, are too close to the earth; we are too far down, too close to the darkness; we cannot shine as God wants us to shine. And therefore He says, "Arise, shine."

But I say again, it is no use for us to try to raise ourselves and I also say again that as certainly as any Seventh-day Adventist here in this Conference or anywhere on the earth will surrender his whole will and body, mind and heart--everything--to God, taking His truth for what it is, God will see to it that the truth shall raise him to where he will shine.

Therefore let us honestly, right here, enter upon the study of this thing in the place where we are, and the work there is to do, in such a way as to see what God has to give us of His truth, which will raise us to the place where He can do what He pleases with us and where, when He uses us and speaks by us, the people will know the power of God is there and will hear the voice from heaven? Unless that be so, we cannot give this message; that is all.

It is no use for us to undertake to tell the people, "Come out of her, my people," when there is no power in our words that will bring them out; no power connected with us that will cause the thing to be done. It would be simply speaking into the air. But we are in a time that is too vastly important for us to be talking into the air. God wants us to talk to men in such a way that in the words that we shall speak, He shall speak to the heart.

We are not sufficient of ourselves to do this. There is the record: "Our sufficiency is of God." We can rest with all our weight upon that statement, "Our sufficiency is of God." That simply says to us that God will make us sufficient; He will furnish our sufficiency.