Scripture Reading: Ezek. 34:5, 10, 14, 15; 36:8-12, 15, 22-30, 33-38
In this message we will consider the matter of the outward and inward recovery by life.
The recovery by life begins in chapter thirty-three, where God sets a watchman. This recovery continues in chapter thirty-four, where God Himself comes in to be the Shepherd to search for His people, to seek them out, to bring them back, and to cause them to enjoy the riches of Christ signified by the riches of the good land. Following this, in chapter thirty-five the Lord reminds us of the need to condemn our old man, which is signified by Edom. This is the reason that after chapter thirty there is another word concerning the judgment upon Edom. For the most part, God waits until judgment has been executed before He begins His work of recovery. However, in the process of recovery, there is still the need of God’s judgment. This is true, in particular, regarding Edom. Edom was judged in the previous section, but because the old man is very difficult to deal with, the judgment upon the old man must be repeated. Yesterday you might have condemned your old man and experienced judgment upon him. But today your old man may return to pay you a visit, perhaps in a nice way or in a subtle way. You have been recovered and you have been brought back to Christ as the good land and have entered into the rich enjoyment of Christ. You might have thought that your old man had been fully condemned and judged, but you did not realize that he has come back without giving you any notice and without asking for permission to visit you. Now as you are enjoying Christ, he is with you, hating your enjoyment of Christ and your enjoyment of the church life.
Ezekiel 35 says that Edom and his company were happy to see that Israel was desolate (vv. 12, 15). Edom was also waiting to possess the two nations of Israel and Judah, claiming them as belonging to Edom. To the Lord Edom was speaking nonsense, for He intended to exercise His judgment upon Edom once again.
We need to learn the lesson of judging Edom. While we are being recovered, we have to judge our old man again and again. The judgment upon Ammon, Moab, Tyrus, Zidon, and Egypt may be once for all, but the judgment upon Edom cannot be once for all. On the contrary, Edom, our old man, must be judged repeatedly until the day of the redemption of our body. This is the reason that between Ezekiel 34 and 36, which are wonderful chapters, there is a very negative chapter regarding the judgment upon Edom. Because Edom returns, the judgment upon him must be repeated. Although we have condemned him, judged him, and chased him away, he comes back. Therefore, we need to cooperate with the Lord to exercise once again His judgment upon the old man.
The genuine recovery of the Lord is not simply a matter of repenting, turning to the Lord, and enjoying the blessing of the Lord. There also needs to be a change in our life and nature. In His recovery, God needs to touch our heart and our spirit and thereby touch our life directly and change us in life and nature. Therefore, we need both the outward recovery described in Ezekiel 34 and the inward recovery described in Ezekiel 36. Because the recovery in Ezekiel 36 concerns our life and our nature and involves our heart and our spirit, chapter thirty-five is inserted to show the importance of judging our old man. In order to recover us and make us a new man, God must judge our old man, our old creation.
A major point in Ezekiel 36 is the recovery of the good land, that is, the restoration of the full enjoyment of the riches of Christ (vv. 8-15, 33-36). Whenever we backslide and become fallen, we lose the rich enjoyment of Christ. Christ Himself is rich, but we may lose the enjoyment of His riches. We praise the Lord that in His recovery there is the restoration of the enjoyment of the riches of Christ.
In the Lord’s recovery there are two aspects: the outward aspect and the inward aspect, the outward recovery and the inward recovery. Suppose that you have fallen away from Christ, from the church life, and from the fellowship with the saints and have become involved with sinful, worldly things. But one day the Lord seeks you out and brings you back to Himself, to the church life, and to the fellowship with the saints. This is a recovery, but it is only an outward recovery, the outward aspect of the Lord’s recovery. However, at the same time the Lord does an inward work. He not only brings you back to the good land, but He also recovers you inwardly. To be recovered back to the church life and to the fellowship with Christ is only the outward aspect. You still need the inward aspect of the Lord’s recovery, which is covered in 36:22-30.
Ezekiel 36:21-23 says, “But I had pity for mine holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the heathen, whither they went. Therefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God; I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name’s sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen, whither ye went. And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, saith the Lord God, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes.” Here we see that in recovering His people, God acts on behalf of His holy name. The inward recovery of life is carried out by God for the sake of His name. Many of us can testify that we have been recovered and revived not because of any merit in ourselves but because God did something in us for His own name.
“I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land” (v. 24). In His recovery, God brings us out from the world and brings us back to our own place. He returns us to Christ as our land.
The Lord not only brings us back to the enjoyment of Christ; He also washes us with clean water. Zechariah 13:1 says that the Lord’s blood is a washing fountain. Likewise, the clean water in Ezekiel 36:25 refers to the Lord’s redeeming and cleansing blood. The Lord Jesus washes us with His cleansing blood not only when we are saved but also every time we are revived and brought back to Him.
The Lord washes us from two categories of dirty things — from filthiness and from idols. Filthiness includes all kinds of sinful things, unjust things, unrighteous things, and dark things. It also includes hating others, doing wrong to others, and indulging in worldly amusements. When we were saved, we felt ashamed of these filthy things. When we are revived, we also have such a feeling of shame, not wanting to recall the sinful and worldly things that we were once involved with. The Lord’s blood as the clean water washes us from all our filthiness. Perhaps today we need to be washed from gossip, rumors, jealousy, criticism, and unkindness. We praise the Lord that no matter how filthy we were, the Lord’s blood is the clean water that washes us and cleanses us.
Before we were saved, we had not only a great deal of filthiness, but we also had many idols. This also might have been our situation after we became backslidden and before we were revived. Consider how many idols you had before you were saved or revived. For some, an article of clothing is an idol. They love this item of clothing more than they love the Lord Jesus. Once while Brother Watchman Nee was ministering in Shanghai, he suddenly pointed to a certain sister and asked, “How many chapters are there in Matthew?” She answered, “Twenty-six.” Then Brother Nee asked her how many buttons were on her long gown, and without hesitation she told him the correct number. Brother Nee went on to say, “You know your long gown so well. You even remember how many buttons it has. But you do not remember how many chapters there are in Matthew.” This simple illustration shows us that we may love an article of clothing more than we love the Lord Jesus. Anything that we love more than the Lord is an idol.
Some Christians have never shed a single tear for the Lord Jesus, but they have shed many tears for their clothing. This proves that they love clothing more than the Lord Jesus. Others may care for things such as a doctoral degree or a high position. Still others may desire fame or may want to make a name for themselves. All these things are idols. We need the Lord’s redeeming blood to cleanse us not only from all our filthiness but also from all our idols.
The cleansing mentioned above is something on the negative side. On the positive side, after the cleansing, the Lord gives us a new heart and a new spirit. Many of you have been Christians for years, but you have never heard a message telling you that you have a new spirit. No one told you that at the time of your conversion, the Lord gave you not only a new heart but also a new spirit.
We need to realize that there is a difference between the heart and the spirit. Our heart is an organ of love. Once I gave a message in which I pointed out that it is not enough just to have a loving heart toward the Lord. A particular sister was troubled by this and wanted to know what I meant by saying that we need something more than a loving heart. To illustrate, I asked her if she loved a certain Bible which belonged to her husband and if she would like to have it. Then I said, “The Bible is yours; please take it.” When she stretched out her hand to take the Bible, I said, “Do not use your hand. Just use your loving heart. Take the Bible with your heart.” Through this illustration she came to understand that having a loving heart is not sufficient. She also needed to stretch forth her hand to take the Bible. In like manner, we need both a heart to love the Lord and a spirit to receive Him.
We love the Lord with our heart. The heart is the loving organ, but it is not the receiving organ. In order to take or receive anything we must use the proper organ. If we would contact the Lord, receive the Lord, enjoy the Lord, eat the Lord, and drink the Lord, we need a spirit. Whereas we love the Lord with our heart, we contact the Lord and receive the Lord with our spirit.
First, we need to love the Lord. This means that we have an appetite for the Lord. If we have no love for the Lord and no appetite for Him, we will not come to Him or receive Him. Before we were saved, we did not love the Lord and we did not have any appetite for the Lord. Instead, our taste was for the world and for the things of the world, especially worldly amusement. When others spoke to us about the Lord Jesus, we did not care to listen. We had no interest because we had no appetite. We loved other things, and our heart was set on those things. However, one day the Lord granted us His gracious visitation, and immediately our appetite was changed. We began to love the Lord and the Bible, and we lost our appetite for the worldly things. This was the Lord’s gracious doing, and it caused our heart to turn from the world to the Lord.
We need to love the Lord Jesus and have an appetite for Him that will turn us from the appetite for other things. We should be able to tell the Lord Jesus that we love Him and that we are hungry and thirsty for Him. Once we have acquired such a loving appetite for the Lord, we need to use our spirit as the organ to contact Him, receive Him, eat Him, drink Him, and breathe Him. Now we can see that we need two organs: a loving heart and a receiving spirit.
The receiving spirit has been greatly neglected by many Christians. In some places messages stir up people’s loving heart but give them no help to exercise their spirit. We thank the Lord that He has given us not only a new heart to love Him but also a new spirit to contact Him, receive Him, and contain Him.
The new heart which the Lord has given us is very soft. Instead of a stiff, hard, and stony heart, we now have a heart of flesh, a heart that is soft toward the Lord. Before we were saved, we could do many sinful things without any feeling of regret. Because our heart was hardened and stiff, we had no inner sense toward sin. But when we were saved, our heart was changed by the Lord. Now we have a softened heart. For example, we may speak only part of a sentence and sense that we are wrong and that we should not have said anything. Immediately we stop speaking and perhaps even apologize for what we have spoken. At other times because our heart is soft, we may be troubled by even a small mistake or by a slight impurity in our motive. This proves that we have been converted and revived, that we have turned to the Lord, and that our heart has become soft and sensitive.
We also need to exercise our spirit. A loving heart is not sufficient. In addition to a loving heart, we need a renewed, receiving spirit.
We had a human spirit before we were saved, but it was deadened. In Ephesians 2:1 Paul says that we were dead in offenses and sins. This surely means that we were dead not in our body or in our soul but in our spirit. While we were living in our body, we were deadened in our spirit. When we were saved, the Lord Jesus enlivened our spirit. Thus, we now have an enlivened and renewed spirit.
You may feel that it is difficult to discern the difference between your spirit and your heart. Instead of trying to analyze the difference, we can recognize the difference according to our experience. When we consider how sweet and precious the Lord Jesus is and how much He has done for us, we may become stirred in our emotion and say, “Lord Jesus, I love You!” This is an expression of our loving heart. But when we call on the name of the Lord Jesus, we can sense that deep within something other than our heart has been exercised. This is our spirit. Just as we know that we have two feet by using them to walk, we know that we have a spirit by exercising our spirit to contact the Lord. One of the best ways to use our spirit to contact the Lord is to call, “O Lord Jesus!” When we exercise our spirit in this way, we have the sense of something moving deep within our being. That something is our spirit.
In his subtlety, Satan has hidden this matter of the human spirit from most Christians. When many believers read the Bible, they do not exercise their spirit but exercise only their mind. When we read the Bible, we need to exercise our spirit as well as our mind. We should never neglect our spirit. If we do not exercise our spirit, we cannot be proper Christians. It is tragic that Christians are taught to take care of the mind but not to care for the spirit. Many care either for fundamental teachings or for Pentecostal gifts, but according to history teachings and gifts have not been effective in building up the church. Of course, teachings and gifts have some value, but the main thing we need today is the exercise of the spirit. This is the most crucial, vital, and prevailing thing.
First Corinthians speaks not only of gifts but also of many other things. For example, in chapter three Paul talks about food and growth. Verse 2 says, “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able to receive it. But neither yet now are you able.” In verse 6 he goes on to say, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth.” This is not a word concerning gifts. In 12:13 Paul says, “For also in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and were all given to drink one Spirit.” In this verse Paul says that we have been positioned to drink of one Spirit, but he says nothing about gifts. Another crucial verse in 1 Corinthians is 15:45b: “The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.” Many readers of 1 Corinthians appreciate the word in chapters twelve and fourteen about speaking in tongues and prophecy but neglect 15:45b. Which do you prefer — speaking in tongues or Christ as the life-giving Spirit? If we compare the life-giving Spirit to speaking in tongues, we can say that the life-giving Spirit is like gold and that speaking in tongues is like brass. In 13:1 Paul says, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but do not have love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.” This indicates a sound without life. If we speak in the tongues of men and of angels and yet have no life in our spirit, this speaking is like sounding brass. Paul’s word here indicates that speaking in tongues is not a matter of life. Speaking in tongues is not an expression of life.
At this juncture, we need to consider Paul’s way of speaking in 1 Corinthians 7. In contrast to many in today’s Pentecostalism, Paul did not say, “Thus saith the Lord.” Rather, in verse 25 he said, “I have no commandment of the Lord, but I give my opinion as one who has been shown mercy by the Lord to be faithful.” The expression Thus saith the Lord is taken from the Old Testament, but it is not used by the New Testament writers. Peter, Paul, and John did not use this expression. Instead of following Pentecostalism to adopt Old Testament expressions, we should learn to exercise our spirit to be one spirit with the Lord (1 Cor. 6:17). This means that we need to realize that, in His inward recovery by life, He has given us a new spirit.
Ezekiel 36:27 says, “I will put My Spirit within you” (NASB). Here we see that the Lord said not only that He will give us a new heart and a new spirit but that He will put His Spirit in us, putting His Spirit into our spirit. We should not neglect our spirit, because our spirit is the vessel which contains the divine Spirit. When believers hear the word spirit, they usually think of the Holy Spirit. They seldom consider that they have a human spirit. Yes, we need the Holy Spirit, but we need to realize that the Holy Spirit is in our regenerated human spirit. “The Spirit Himself witnesses with our spirit” (Rom. 8:16). Praise the Lord that we have a new heart and a new spirit and that we have the Holy Spirit within our spirit strengthening us all the time.
This enables us to keep God’s commandments. God’s commandments are according to His nature, and we have the nature of God within us because we have His Spirit within us. Now there is something within us that corresponds to God’s law. God’s Spirit within us contains God’s nature, and God’s nature corresponds to God’s law. Because we have God’s nature within us, it is easy for us to keep His law. Formerly it was difficult for us to love others, but now it is easy to love others and difficult to hate them because we have a new nature, God’s nature, within us.
In 36:34-36 the Lord promised that the desolate and waste places would become like the garden of Eden. There the plant of renown (34:29), Christ as the tree of life, would be their rich supply. The local churches need to reach such a high condition that they are like the garden of Eden. Even today, often in the church meetings we have the sense that we are in the garden of Eden.
Ezekiel 36:37-38 says, “Thus saith the Lord God; I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them; I will increase them with men like a flock. As the holy flock, as the flock of Jerusalem in her solemn feasts; so shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of men: and they shall know that I am the Lord.” Here the Lord promised that He would bring in flocks of people. Although He has promised to do this, we still need to inquire of Him. This means that we need to pray for the increase, saying, “O Lord, flock people in. You promised this to us.”
In the past, whenever we prayed for an increase of number, the Lord answered. I feel that we need to pray more. The Lord promised, yet He needs our inquiring. He promised that He will increase our number by flocks of men, but we need to pray for this and ask Him to do it. I hope that the saints in all the local churches will pray definitely and specifically for the increase of numbers. We should never be content with our present number. Rather, we should all aspire to be doubled within a period of time. Thus, we need to pray, “Lord, flock people in.”
In 1963 in Los Angeles, we had only twenty to thirty people, but after we prayed for six months, the number was greatly increased. In Elden Hall we also prayed that the Lord would flock people in. We prayed, “Lord, bring flocks of men to us,” and the Lord heard this prayer. I feel that today we need to pray even more, standing upon and claiming Ezekiel 36:37-38 concerning the increase of numbers.
We should not say that numbers do not mean anything and that we do not care for numbers. We should not comfort ourselves with any failure in the matter of increase. We surely need the increase in numbers. We need to pray for the increase, claiming the Lord’s promise in Ezekiel 36. When some hear this, they may say that they care not for quantity but for quality. However, quality comes out of quantity. Therefore, we need to pray that the Lord will give us the increase and that He will bring in flocks of men.
