I.　The inward recovery by life is carried out by God for the sake of His holy name—Ezek. 36:21-23:

A.　In His recovery God acts on behalf of His holy name.

B.　We have been recovered and revived not because of any merit in ourselves but because God did something in us for His own name.

II.　In the inward recovery by life, the Lord washes us with clean water—v. 25:

A.　The clean water in verse 25 refers to the Lord's redeeming and cleansing blood.

B.　We need the Lord's redeeming blood to cleanse us from our filthiness and our idols.

C.　The Lord washes us with His cleansing blood every time we are revived and brought back to Him.

III.　In the inward recovery by life, the Lord gives us a new heart and a new spirit—v. 26:

A.　The Lord gives us a new heart to love Him:

1.　Our heart represents us with regard to our inclination, affection, delight, and desire.

2.　Our heart is our representative in action, our acting agent.

3.　The new heart comes from the renewing of our old heart.

4.　God gives us a new heart because He wants us to incline toward Him, adore Him, desire Him, and love Him.

5.　To love the Lord means that we have an appetite for the Lord.

B.　The Lord gives us a new spirit to receive Him:

1.　Whereas we love the Lord with our heart, we contact and receive the Lord with our spirit.

2.　For us to have a new spirit means that our old, deadened spirit has been enlivened and renewed through regeneration.

3.　In his subtlety Satan has hidden the matter of the human spirit from most Christians.

4.　We need to realize that, in His inward recovery by life, the Lord has given us a new spirit and that we need to exercise our spirit to be one spirit with the Lord—1 Cor. 6:17.

IV.　In the inward recovery by life, the Lord puts His Spirit into our spirit and causes to walk in His statutes and to observe His ordinances—v. 27:

A.　The Holy Spirit is in our regenerated spirit—v. 27a.

B.　Because we have a new heart and a new spirit and because the Holy Spirit is in our spirit, we are enabled to keep God's commandments—v. 27b:

1.　God's commandments are according to His nature, and we have His nature within us because the Spirit, who is in our spirit, contains God's nature.

2.　According to Romans 8:4 the righteous requirements of the law are fulfilled in those who walk according to the spirit.

V.　As a result of the inward recovery by life, the desolate and waste places will become like the garden of Eden—Ezek. 36:34-36:

A.　Eventually the Lord's recovery should come to the point where it is like the garden of Eden.

B.　In "the garden of Eden" we have Christ as the pants of renown (34:29), Christ as the tree of life with the rich food supply.

C.　As a fulfillment of the prophecy in 17:22-23, in the church life as today's "garden of Eden" we also enjoy Christ as the tender twig which becomes a majestic cedar.

VI.　In His recovery by life, the Lord desires to increase us "with men like flock"—vv. 37-38:

A.　The Lord has promised to increase us, filling the waste cities "with flocks of men," but we still need to inquire of Him, asking Him to do what He desires to do.

B.　We need to pray that the Lord will give us the increase and that He will bring in flocks of men.