Series: “To the Angel of the Church at Tomoka:
Christ’s Message for His Church Today”
#5: “Reviving Spiritual Corpses”
Ezekiel 37:1-14 and Revelation 3:1-6 (NRSV)
By John Gill ~ February 9, 2025
“The head bone’s connected to the – neck bone; the neck bone’s connected to the – shoulder bone… Now hear the word of the Lord.” We all sang that cute little song as children, and thought it was just a clever way to teach us a little about our bodies. But in reality, it is actually based on the passage we just read from Ezekiel.
As you know, Ezekiel’s vision is not a lesson on anatomy, but a reminder of God’s promise that He will bring new life to bones that have long been dead.
That was an apt description of Israel at the time that Ezekiel had his vision, when God’s people faced the challenge of living in exile in Babylon. They were dead as a nation. But more than that, they had become spiritually dead. With this vision, God promises He will bring new life to His people out of their spiritual graveyard.
This could just as well describe the condition of our fifth church in this sermon series, the church at Sardis. They were just as spiritually dead as Israel, and in need of an infusion of life.
To understand why that church in Sardis was in such a sad state, it is helpful for us to know something about the city in which they lived. Sardis had a long and glorious history. It was a wealthy city, the center of the wool trade. Over the centuries it had been a capital city, off and on. Sardis was an important city, located at the intersection of five highways.
Seven hundred years before this letter was written, Sardis had become one of the greatest cities of the ancient world. Ruled over by the king of Lydia, it had magnificence and luxury and nearly unlimited wealth.
Sardis was also a great military power, which is really no wonder when you understand that it stood in the midst of a river plain on a plateau some fifteen hundred feet above the valley. The sides of the plateau were sheer cliffs. An enemy could be seen approaching for miles all around. The city was nearly impregnable. Looking at Sardis from a distance was like looking at a gigantic watchtower high above the Hermus Valley.
Sardis grew until it could no longer fit on the plateau and the buildings spilled over into the valley below. Now it became a two-tiered city - upper and lower Sardis. A river that was said to contain gold bisected Lower Sardis. The greatest of all the kings of Sardis lived at the time of the discovery of this gold. His name was Croesus. You may have heard of him, made famous in the saying that someone is “as rich as Croesus.”
Croesus and his people were extremely rich, and it was their wealth that brought them down. As they settled more and more into lives of falsely secure luxury and splendor, they became soft and flabby. Their society degenerated. Smug in their self-confidence, they thought their wealth would last forever.
In his haughtiness, Croesus recklessly declared war on Persia, whose king was named Cyrus. In order to get to the armies of Cyrus, he had to cross the Halys River. Croesus took counsel about the battle in one of his pagan temples and heard this prophecy: "If you cross the River Halys, you will destroy a great empire." He never even considered that the empire destroyed would be his own.
Croesus was routed when he crossed the River, but he was not worried. He simply had to retire to the citadel of Sardis, recoup, refit, and fight again. But Cyrus laid siege to the city. Cyrus waited fourteen days, then offered a special reward to anyone who could find an entry into Sardis.
One of the soldiers in the Persian army noticed that the composition of the rock on which Sardis stood had cracks and faults in it. One evening as he stood watching the wall above, he had seen a Sardian soldier accidentally drop his helmet off the edge. That soldier made his way down what appeared to be a crack below the wall, emerged outside, retrieved his helmet, and disappeared back inside. The watching Persian warrior reasoned that there must be a crack large enough to let a man through the wall. The next night he led a party of Persian troops up through the fault in the rock. When they arrived they found it completely unguarded and the soldiers of the city asleep. Under the cover of darkness, he and his men opened the gates of the city and Sardis was sacked that night.
The people of Sardis were so overconfident they had no watchmen on the battlements! To make matters worse, they didn’t learn their lesson – 200 years later another invader did exactly the same thing! It’s a sad commentary on the population of Sardis that they twice lost their city because they were just too lazy to watch!
Due to a false sense of security, the people became complacent. They failed to be vigilant and made themselves vulnerable to attack. They were caught off guard. That city with such a glorious past, had degenerated into decay.
Apparently, a similar thing had happened to the church at Sardis. No doubt, the church must have had a glorious beginning, with vital faith and a zeal for Christ. That congregation had everything going for it – untroubled by the threat of heresy from within, or from persecution from without.
So what went wrong? Like the city, the church got lazy. Complacency set in. They failed to be vigilant and took their salvation for granted. They left themselves vulnerable to attack, and were caught off-guard. Sadly, this church with such a glorious past had degenerated into decay – just like the city. (Hmmm… does this sound a little familiar?)
In our text, the heavenly Christ offers very few words of commendation for Sardis – mostly words of condemnation. He says: “You have a name (that is - the reputation) of being alive, but you are dead.” In other words, they had the appearance of life, but were only walking spiritual corpses, just playing church.
The Sardis church just blended in with society. In doing so, it lost its distinctiveness – and the credibility of its witness. The Christians at Sardis were so bland that they were barely even noticed in that city. Because their faith was so weak, they failed to stand against the sin that was all around them.
In my ministry, I have served a couple of struggling churches that sadly had become “irrelevant” to the community around them – and in both cases, later they either closed or had to merge with another congregation. No congregation can “rest on its laurels” and live in the glories of their past, pretending that “all is well” in their present. While those congregations saw themselves as vital, the community around them didn’t even know they existed.
Does our community know we exist? If Tomoka UMC closed its doors today, would this community even notice? Would it grieve the loss of our church?
In one of the commentaries I use in preparing my sermons, I came across this description of the church at Sardis (I wonder? could it also describe Tomoka???): Here is how the church at Sardis was described: “This is a church which everyone speaks well of, the perfect model of inoffensive Christianity, unable to distinguish between the peace of well-being and the peace of death.” OUCH!
Jesus is warning them that, just as the city was lost due to lazy complacency and lack of vigilance, in the same way, theirchurch will fall victim to Satan, if they don’t wake up!
Sounds contemporary, right? Doesn’t Sardis sound very much like the church today? For the most part, doesn’t our church “blend into society?” Could it be that we have lost our distinctiveness and the credibility of our witness? Because of our complacency about the faith, is it possible that we have become lazy and let down our guard against Satan’s attack? Isn’t our faith often so weak that we fail to stand up for Christ in the world around us?
Couldn’t it be said that many of our congregations today have only the appearance of life, but are actually merely walking corpses, only going through the motions of religion – just playing church?
Or, as Paul put it in 2 Timothy 3:5, don’t many Christians today “hold to the outward appearance of godliness, but deny its power?”
Could this describe our beloved United Methodist Church – as a whole? For years now, many of us have been concerned about the spiritual health of our denomination. Lots of us have looked at the symbol of our movement, the “cross and flame,” and been struck with the irony: In many of our churches, the flame of the Holy Spirit seems to have gone out!
John Wesley, the founder of our Methodist movement, was very concerned that this might one day be the case. As you may remember from my sermons on our Wesleyan heritage, John Wesley personally experienced the difference between a dry lifeless religion and a vital Spirit-filled faith. In 1738, having already become a priest in the Church of England, taught at Oxford University, and served as a missionary to the American colony of Georgia, Wesley’s faith was in crisis. Then, at a prayer meeting on Aldersgate Street in London, Wesley experienced a spiritual awakening which launched a movement that lit the fire of the Methodist Revival, sweeping across the British Isles and the Colonies in America – our Methodist “Pentecost.”
Later in his ministry, Wesley warned the Methodists about the dangers of allowing the fire of faith to die, when he wrote, “I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America. But I am afraid, lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case, unless they hold fast both the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out.”1
Is it possible that the only fire of the Holy Spirit in our churches is the painted fire on our logo?
What about Tomoka? Does the Spirit live within us? John Wesley warned the Methodists that spiritual complacency would lead to a people, “having the form of religion without the power.” Would Wesley say the same thing of us?
This letter to Sardis, like all the others, is sounding an alarm: it is a call to revival. People always talk about revival, they may even pray for it, but it doesn’t happen. Why? Because they don’t want it bad enough. We tend to think that revival is just the icing on the cake of faith – it would be nice, but it’s not really required.
Think again! Hear what the heavenly Christ says to Sardis: “Wake up! . . . If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you. . . . If you conquer, . . . I will not blot your name out of the book of life.”
Friends, revival is not optional! It is not acceptable to Christ that a church or a Christian be a spiritual corpse, “having the reputation of being alive,” but actually dead. Christ goes so far as to say that, when he comes to pass judgment, those who have allowed their spiritual lives to die will find their names “blotted out of the Book of Life.” Apparently, our salvation can be lost – and our church can be lost – if we allow our passion to die!
Yes, this passage leaves no doubt: Christ expects revival!
And I am hopeful that our congregation is dedicated to sparking a new flame of the Spirit in our church. I believe that weare hungry for a more passionate spirituality, and are striving to make that new vitality in Christ possible. I believe that God is preparing to blow the breath of his Spirit across our dry bones, giving Tomoka a new life in Christ!
That is our hope for the future. But what if we look at ourselves right now and decide that we are spiritually dead or dying? As always, whenever the Heavenly Christ warns judgment, he also offers hope. Our text tells us five things we can do to help revival take place in our lives and in our church:
1) Wake up! (and smell the coffee)
For revival to take place, we must first take our spiritual pulse. We need to determine if we are moving toward vitality, or toward spiritual death. Burying our head in the sand pretending “all is well” doesn’t change the reality of our spiritual condition. Are we healthy as a congregation, or do we need to “wake up” and take action to do something about it?
2) Remember
The word translated “remember” literally means, to “keep on remembering” or “never allow yourself to forget.” Just as we found in the letter to the church at Ephesus, we must “keep on remembering” the love we had for Christ when we first believed. We must never let the fire of our passion for Christ fade.
3) Repent
It is one of the most basic spiritual principles that new life cannot come until the old life is shed. We must ask forgiveness for just how far we have strayed from God. Repentance is a decisive moment in time, when we turn our lives over to God and begin again with a clean slate. As it is written in the Book of Acts (3:19): “Repent, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.” During this Sermon Series, we are given many opportunities to confess our failings as individuals and as a church, so that we can move forward confidentin God’s forgiveness and grace- that “times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.”
4) Obey (that is, Keep God’s Commandments)
To keep our faith vital and alive, you must spend time with God’s word. You can’t obey what you don’t know. Once you know God’s word, written on your heart, it will guide you through life. When you are in the will of God, as revealed through his Word, his Spirit will dwell within you. Matthew 7:24 says this, “Everyone who hears my words and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.” This is why I have been preaching this sermon series on what Christ is saying to our Church through the Letters to the Seven Churches of Revelation. We need to be reminded of what Christ expects of us as his church.
5) And finally, Watch
We are to watch in at least two senses: First, don’t let down your guard, but be alert to Satan’s attack. Satan can only defeat us when we allow him to do so. So, don’t let him!
The other way we are to watch is to be alert to the coming of Christ as one who judges. We must always be alert as he will come again when we least expect him. And he wants to find us living passionately for him when he returns. That means we must constantly keep our spiritual house in order, whenever he comes. As someone has wisely observed, “He who walks hand in hand with Christ cannot be taken by surprise by his coming!”
If we do these five things: Wake up, Remember, Repent, Obey, and Watch, then we will read this letter to Sardis and to us as Good News! Because Jesus promises that those who conquer will NOT have their names blotted out of the Book of Life; instead, Christ will stand before his Father and claim us as his own!
So, the question God raised about the Valley of Dry Bones is still as pertinent today as it was thousands of years ago - “Can these bones live?” And God answers his own question. As he said to Ezekiel, he says to us: “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. ‘I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.’”
My hope and prayer is that we all are experiencing the breath of God breathing new vitality into the dry bones of our lives. And that God would breathe new life into our church, so that together, we at Tomoka might serve Christ and this community for many years to come with renewed passion for him.
“Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.”
1John Wesley, “Thoughts upon Methodism” (http://www.imarc.cc/one_meth/vol-02-no-02.html)
© 2025 by John B. Gill, III