some good singing. Appreciate our kids and singing and I mean this is a huge crowd to them. Got like 30 people in our church and so it's a huge crowd but you did good. I appreciate you doing that. You know with all the funerals that I've had to preach, me and my wife, as you get older you got to figure out what you're gonna do when you die. And I don't want my kids. I had to do everything for my mom. She had no plans. And so me and my wife's been discussing it. And I told her, she said, well, where do you want to be buried? I said at TJ Maxx. Why? At least you'll come and see me every two to three days. Y'all know what I'm talking about, lady? Either there or Belks. Man, but anyway, now TJ Maxx is getting all the money. But did y'all hear about Chuck Norris went to a feminist rally? He come back with a shirt iron and a ham sandwich, amen? Y'all know what a feminist rally is, right? They don't fix ham sandwiches, but they did for Chuck Norris. But anyway, it's good to be here. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. I do enjoy the opportunity to be at camp. Let's see what the Lord has for us. Let's take our Bibles and go to the book of John, chapter 11. And you're going to get the Shelby. I don't even know what hospital I was in. I'll be honest with you, Dilaudid is a good thing when you're hurting. Amen? I don't know what they, I went to one hospital and the lady said, you got pancreatitis. I didn't know what that was. I said, what's that mean? I said, can't you give me something? She said, yeah, we're gonna give you something. We ain't got no beds here. I said, I gotta stay here? She said, no, you ain't staying here, we ain't got no beds. You're going somewhere else, so they loaded me up in the ambulance. And she said, you ever been in an ambulance before? I said, no. She said, well, we're going to take you somewhere. There's evidently two different hospitals there in Shelby. And I said, y'all going to run the lights? No, we ain't running the lights. I said, man, I'm paying for this. Y'all better be running the lights and the sirens and everything else. Y'all better shop me back in the rhythm. I mean, man, I'm going to get my money out of this place. Nope, didn't do it. But I will say this, the doctor was a nut, but the nurses was good. Them nurses, they were good. But I was supposed to preach, after camp, I was supposed to come back up to North Carolina and preach a revival. And Lord didn't see fit to let me do that. And I had to pretty much cancel. I had a couple more revivals I had to cancel. And God gave me this message in the hospital, and I want to give it to you today. And I thought it was for the revival I was going to preach, but there was another meaning to this message, and maybe it'll help you. John chapter 11, this morning. And we'll look at a few verses this morning, so keep your Bibles open. The Bible says in verse number one, now you know how preachers are, they'll kind of read and preach as they're reading. So bear with me. And if I forget something, I'm 55. But the Bible said, now a certain man was what? Sick. And that fit me good, because I was sick. Name Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and the sister of Martha. It was Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother, Lazarus, was what? Sick. Have we established the man sick? All right, everybody understand he's sick. All right? So y'all got that part. Therefore his sister sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou, what? And what's wrong with him? He's sick. All right, so I want to establish two things. Number one, he's sick. The man's sick. And number two, God loves him. Now, I was thinking about this last night while sleeping on the rock. God, and I couldn't come up with but two people, and there might be more, and if there is, let me know. But I know the Lord said He loved us, and He loved us. But He names John, He loved John, John the beloved, whom the Lord loved. And he's saying that he loves Lazarus. Now, you said, no, Martin was saying that, but he's gonna say it later on, that he loved Lazarus. So he's sick, but God loves him. He's sick, but God loves him. Verse four, when Jesus heard that, he said, this sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. Now Jesus loved Martha. Now there's another person He loved, and her sister, and Lazarus. So now He's naming His love Martha, He's loved her sister, He's loved Lazarus. When He had heard, therefore, that He was sick, He abode two days, still in the same place where He was. He wasn't, listen, sometimes we think, well, Lord, I'm sick, I gotta have help now, and the Lord is, he abode two days. He's got the noose, he knows that Lazarus is sick, but yet he abode two days. Verse 7, Then after saith he to his disciples, Let us go into Judea again. His disciples said unto him, Master of the Jews of late, salt and stone thee, and goest thou thither again. And Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumble not, because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumble, because there is no light in him. These things He said, after that He said unto them, Our friend, now He's loving, amen, He's sick, and He said, Our friend sleepeth, but I go that I may awake him out of his sleep. Brother, could you bring me that water? I'm sorry, I didn't bring it up here. Just give me a second, let me clear my throat. So the Lord saying that Lazarus sleepeth. Verse 12, then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well. Howbeit Jesus spoke of his death. He thought he spoken of him taking rest and sleep. And look at verse number 14. Then saith Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. All right, y'all see that? Can we all agree that Jesus just said, Lazarus dead? Lazarus is somebody that the Lord loves. He loves him. This morning the Lord loves you. You say, well, preacher, I'm not really born again. Wherewith he loved us. Why we were yet sinners. Christ died for the ungodly. He loved us. And Lazarus is dead. This is what I want to preach on now. I've got a long introduction and a short message. How to come back from the dead. How to come back from the dead. You know the relationship is when, what I put down here is a kinship. The Lord loved Lazarus. And in four years of my life, the last four years has been the toughest that I've ever gone through in my life. And I'm gonna be honest with you. God had to show me that he didn't need me. See, because sometimes you think when you get in the ministry that God needs you. I mean, the work's gonna crumble if I'm not there. God had to show me He did not need me. He had to show me that He was everything and I was nothing. But He still loved me. In July, two years ago, I got sick. I got a physical, it was physical sickness. The Lord still loved me. There was a kinship there that the Lord makes everyone known in these passages, 14 passages, that he loved Lazarus. I want to tell you something, church. You know, over the years, I used to be this, I guess, you know, fiery, whatever type of preacher. But over the past four to five years, God has just broke me. He's just broke me. And my church will tell you, I cry a lot when I preach. But four years ago, I got sick. I got sick to the point that I died. Are y'all with me this morning? I tried to argue with the Lord. I didn't want to preach this. And it's easy to stand here this morning and have a camp meeting message. And boy, those are the type of messages I like to preach where everybody's shouting. And everybody's saying hallelujah, but you know, there's times that people die. People that God loves die. And this morning, Lazarus is a man that God loved and there's nowhere in the scripture you can find to tell me what made him sick. There's a lot of Christians today, they're sick. They're sick. And what they don't realize is their sickness is killing them. You know, we went through COVID and I'm not, look, we've had people in our church had COVID, I've had COVID three times. I'm not making light of COVID. But you know one thing about when people get sick, I wrote this down, they're infected. And there's people in the church that are sick and they're infected. Man, the worst thing, the worst sickness, I mean, a common sickness is the stomach virus. Now if we heard somebody had the stomach virus, bless God, you just on your own. I'm sorry, we're gonna leave you on the side of the road, we'll come back in a couple of days, throw you some water out, Pepto-Bismol, we'll come back and check on you, amen? I don't want the stomach virus! And this man had got infected. Something made him sick. Church, I don't know what made him sick, but something made him sick. This ain't just somebody, just nobody. This is a man that God loved. This is the man that not only had a kinship with the Father, he had a friendship with him. He said he's our friend. There's people in the church that are our friends. There's people in the church that we love that are sick. They're affected. And, you know, sometimes you can be sick and, you know, I've always been told I'm not a medical doctor, but if you start running a fever, you're infected. Boy, I tell you, I don't like running a fever. Any of y'all do crazy stuff when you're running fevers? One time I was going to preach somewhere and I was running a fever and my wife said, you ain't going nowhere. You was up hunting Easter eggs. I didn't believe that, Easter eggs. I mean, if I was infected in a fever, should it be Krispy Kreme donuts, it probably wouldn't be Easter eggs. But she said I was. You know, someone that gets sick, they're infected, but number two, they're irritable. They're irritable. Now you ladies say, men, boy, they can't be sick. I know how these ladies are, amen. And I'm perfect when I'm sick, amen. I'm a blessing. I just lay in my bed and don't bother nobody. Why are you laughing? Do you know what I found out about people that are sick in the church? Not only are they infected, they're infecting others. And by the way, you're irritable. You don't want to get up and fellowship and say, let's greet everybody. Now, I'm not saying that if you didn't greet it, you're sick this morning. That ain't what I'm saying. I ain't saying I'm mad, I ain't say that. There's some people that don't like doing that, but I'm telling you, I've been around people that have been happy, that love the Lord, that's been going, and then all of a sudden something happens and they get sick. Not only are they infected, they're irritable. I don't want to be around nobody. Everything you say to them sets them off. Amen. You say, how you doing, brother? Hey, I'm praying for you. I don't do that. I don't need your prayers. They're infected. They're irritable. I wrote this down. Then they isolate. They isolate. They're sick. I mean, this man that the Lord loved, he's sick. And he dies. Now, I know this probably gonna go over like a lead balloon, but I'm just telling you what the Lord showed me in the hospital. Because sometimes, you got the world by the tail, Things are going good, and then your world just drops from you. I walked. Things happen in mine and my wife's life, and just one after another, dominoes start falling. I'm over cleaning out my mom's house. We had to put her in a nursing home. And to this day, that eats at me. We tried, we tried, we tried, we tried. I was over there cleaning out my mom's house, and my wife calls, and she says, she said, have you talked to Connor? I said, no, Connor's my oldest boy. She said, his house is on fire. I drop what I do, I drive 30 to 40 minutes there, and I get there, and my son is laying in the ground, in the mud. Everything he's on is gone. His wife has left him. Just left him. We think that the fire was suspicious. That's all I'm gonna say. My son's laying on the ground. I'm telling you, there's things that come in your life that'll make you sick. And I don't care how good a strong relationship you have with the Lord, you gotta be on guard. Now I picked him up and I held him. And he just sat there and sobbed in my arms. It just domino after domino after domino in our lives. And I began to die. Now I'm preaching on me. I'm telling you what the Lord showed me. I began to die. In verse number 8, I'm going to read this, and this is what Zipel said, Master, did you use salt to stone you? But let's just skip down, and he goes, in verse 13, Howbeit he spake of his death, But they thought he had spoken of him taking a rest and sleep. Then he said of them plainly, Lazarus is dead. Now this is what I want to say. This might go over. Lazarus is dead. He's not depressed. Have you ever seen a dead depressed person? They're dead. They're not depressed. They're not discouraged. They're not in distress. They're dead. When somebody dies, oh, it's just depression, they're just going through, no, they're dead. They're dead, something within them is dead. And this man had died. You know, I've heard this, and we, as preachers, we don't believe this. If somebody passes away, when my mother passed away, I didn't say pray for my mother, she's dead. She's gone. Amen? And I'm not saying don't pray spiritually, but Lazarus could not pray. He could not read his Bible. He couldn't go to church no more. He's dead. I'm telling you folks, I'm just preaching. I might not ever get an opportunity to come back. I'm just trying to tell you. Something happened. that caused this man to get sick, and it was sickness unto death, and he died. And I've dealt with people that's sick, and I've dealt with people that has died spiritually, and I'm telling you, they don't want to hear nothing from you. I went up to God one time, thought I was being a blessing. Hey brother, I'm praying for you, don't pray for me. Don't pray for him. I mean, this man was in our church, the church I was at prior to this church. He was in our church. He was going with me to the prison ministry, brother. He stood up and preached with the touch of God. And something happened to this man. And I went up to him, hey brother, I'm praying for you. Don't pray for me. He's sick. He didn't want to be prayed for. I'm getting somewhere with it, amen. I hope I hadn't just killed everything. You know what Lazarus' death did? It affected those around him. Anybody that has pleasure, any Christian that has pleasure in people dying spiritually, something's wrong with them. It affected his friends. The Jews, in verse 31, the Jews which were with her in her house comforted her when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out and followed her, saying, she goeth into the grave to weep there. I'm telling you, it ought to bother us. When somebody's sick and they die spiritually, it ought to break our heart. They didn't say, hey, you go out there and weep by yourself. They were with her. And this morning I want to tell you, church, there are people in our churches, there's people that we know that are Christians that God loves that have gotten sick and they've died. Not only did it affect his friends, and I'm going to tell you, I know it affected my friends. They said, what's wrong with you, brother? I'm sick. I'm sick. At least I want you to know I want to be honest to you, church. I'm sick. Not only did it affect his friends, verse 32, then when Mary was come where Jesus was and saw him, she fell down on his feet, saying, Lord, that has been here, my brother had not died. It affected his family. You know, all my Christian life, I want you to understand what I'm fixing to say. All my Christian life, I bestowed the church with my family. The church is my family. Why do you think I call Brother Carpenter brother? a brother Aaron, a brother Luke, or amen. Why not do that? I say brother Joel, amen, because they're my family. It ought to affect us when somebody dies spiritually. It ought to break our hearts. But you know what? One of the greatest verses you find in your Bible is two words. Two words, it affected his family, it affected his friends, but it affected the father. Because he wrote, I'm telling you, Jesus wept. You tell me that Jesus didn't love him. And I wonder today how many places the Lord stands at the foot of the Lazarus that sit in our churches that are dead and he weeps for them. Lazarus is dead. He could not pray no more, he could not read his Bible or go to church, he's dead. When most people get in that state, they don't want to read, they don't want to pray, and they don't want to go. They just don't want to go. Me and my wife made a decision four years ago. We're going to take a step a day. Maybe some days we'll walk further than we did the day before. And I told this precious church here, I went down there as a favor to Brother Delaney. I had no desire. I had no desire in the pastoring. I had no desire. And I came to that church and I preached something and, you know, they asked me to come back. I knew they were desperate. They couldn't find nobody, they couldn't. That's what his dad, his dad said, man, can you come back the whole month again? We can't find nobody. I said, sure, I ain't got nothing else going on. And I brought more problems to them, but those people have loved me and my wife beyond anything that I could express this morning. Those children, and they're still children, even though they're 20 and 25 and coming to youth camp. To see them today. Stand up here and sing. It's under the blood. Oh, praise his dear name. It affected his friends, his family, and his father. God knew what he was doing. See, sometimes God don't give you the plan. Amen? He didn't give us the plan. All we knew is this is what it was, and we walked every day, and them people have been so kind to us, and they've helped us, they've encouraged us, they've loved us. And I'm telling you, friend, I thank God this morning. that God put us there. Because that's where we needed to be. And we couldn't see that. We find his disease, he was sick, his death, he died, but then we find his deliverance. You know, God showed up. Tell you something church, you don't know what's going to make you sick. And I don't tell you in a crowd this size, there's some of you sick. Some of you sick. We know the Lord delivers Lazarus. And this is the one thing I want to say and I'm done. So how do you come back from the dead? I mean, my wife's always said, if you get up, you got to tell them how to do it. It's real simple. I mean this is going to be so simple, it's going to be so hard for some of you. It's found in verse 43. When he had thus had spoken, this is the Lord, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth. Let me tell you, let me say, church, this is it. You come when he calls. I want to ask you a question, Sam. This is a hypothetical, you don't answer it. But if you were dead, and you heard the Lord call, and you said, well, I'm just going to ignore his voice. That don't mean God's going to come back your way. I'm telling you this morning, church, I did not want to preach this. I did not want to get up here and do this. And I wrestled with the Lord. And I don't know if it's just for one person, but I know without a shadow of a doubt, God told me to preach this message. Because there's somebody dead. There's somebody in here that got sick. And when the Lord called Lazarus, he came. And this morning, maybe the Lord's calling you. I don't know what made you sick. And by the way, you don't have to tell me what made you sick. You don't have to confess to the pastor what made you sick. God already knows what made you sick. You say, well, if I come down here don't know I've died. Well, let me put it to you this way. Maybe you know somebody that's died. Maybe it's affected you. Maybe you want to come down here this morning and it's up to the preacher. He can give the invitation. Maybe you want to come down here and say, you know, I know a Lazarus. I know you love him. Hey, listen, Lord, would you call him? Would you get him? This man, he came out bound, and God said, loose him and let him go. And God delivered him. And I can tell you this morning, my friend, that I remember when God began to call me and say, hey, get up. Amen. It's time to get up. You've been dead long enough. Amen. Get up and live again. And friends, some of you need to get up and live again. You've been dead too long. And God's been calling. God's saying, get up. God's saying, come forth. I'm telling you this morning, you've been dead long enough. And by the way, you stinketh. He said he'd been dead for four days. Surely he stinketh. Tell you, death will make you stink. This morning. How do you come back from there? You better come when he calls. I remember when I got up, I said, I've had enough. I've had enough living the life of a dead man. January, January the 1st, God gave me a message. And this is what it was. Take some time. You know what the first point of that point was? Take some time to live again. Take some time to love again. Amen? That's the day that I got up and I said, I'm no longer gonna be dead. And by the way, you can fake it, but God knows. How to come back from the dead. Preacher.