As I said before, when I was born of my parents I received their
nature, I received the nature of the flesh; and I cannot serve God in
the flesh. "God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship
Him in spirit and in truth." And before a man can worship God he must
be born of God; he must be born of the Spirit. Then with this new
birth, with this new life, he can serve God; then the yoke is easy,
and the burden is light. A man may as well try to fly to the moon as
to serve God before he has been born of the Spirit; it is utterly
impossible. The natural man is at enmity against God; his natural
heart is at war with God; it always has been, and it always will be.
And not only that, but you cannot make it better. God never mends, He
creates anew; therefore don't be trying to patch up that old Adam
nature. God says, "It shall never come into my presence." Therefore
God has just set it aside. But He tells us how we are to come into His
presence, and how we are to get into His kingdom. This is worthy to be
borne in mind. You cannot educate men into it. That is what the world
is trying to do. But he that climbeth up by some other way than the
Lord's way, the same is a thief and a robber. You had better be born
into it in God's way.
We have a law in America that no man shall be President of the United
States that has not been born on American soil. We have a great many
Englishmen come to America, and a great many men from all parts of the
world, and yet I have never heard one complain of that law. They say
America has the right to say who shall be President. I come here to
your country, and I do not complain because you have a Queen to reign
over you. What right have I to complain? Has not England a right to
say who shall rule it, and who shall be its Queen? Foreigners have no
right to interfere. And I would like to ask you this question, Has not
God a right to say who shall come into His kingdom, and how we shall
come? Now, my friend, God tells us here we are to come into His
kingdom by the new birth. We must be born from above, born of the
Spirit, and then we get a nature that goes out towards God. If you
take a drunken man, and put him on the very pavement of heaven, he
will not be happy there. The drunkard doesn't want heaven. What is he
to do there? He has no whisky to drink there, and he has none of his
old companions. What is he to do? He would say, "This is hell to me. I
don't want to stay here." A man that cannot spend one Sabbath on earth
among God's people, what is he to do with that eternal Sabbath, with
those that have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of
the Lamb? A man must have a spiritual nature before he wants to go to
heaven. Heaven cannot have any attractions to a man until he is born
of the Spirit.