Look at the sons of Jacob. Look at them when they took away their brother, and after they had delivered him into slavery see them coming back. How much they must have suffered with their secret during those twenty years! What misery they must have endured as they looked, during all those years, at their old father sorrowing for his son, Joseph! They knew the boy had not been killed. They knew he was in slavery. For twenty years the sin was covered up, but at last it came back upon them. God had, in the meantime, been doing every thing for Joseph. He had raised him nearly to the throne of Egypt. A famine struck the land of the father, and the old man sent his sons down into Egypt to purchase corn. God was at work. He was making these men bring their own sin home to themselves. Their consciences smote them, and they confessed, in the presence of Joseph, that their sin had found them out. Twenty years after it was committed that sin was resurrected, and they were brought face to face with it. “He that covereth his sin shall not prosper.” JOHN THE BAPTIST. I want to call your attention to John, the forerunner of Christ. On hearing the news of the death of the king Joseph brings Jesus back to Nazareth, and there He remained for thirty years. I once read of the founder of the Russian Empire going down to a Dutch sea port as a stranger and in disguise, that he might learn how to build ships and return home and impart this knowledge to his own subjects. People have wondered at that. But this is a far greater wonder, that the Prince of Glory should come down here and learn the carpenter’s trade. He was not only the son of a carpenter, but He was a carpenter Himself. His father was a carpenter, and He was a carpenter, too, for we read that they brought it up against Him that He was a carpenter. We read: “And when He was come into His own country, He taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said: ‘Whence hath this man this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son?’”