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?’”
Right here is one lesson that we ought to learn, and that is, when Christ was here He was an industrious man. I have often said on this platform that I have never known a lazy man to be converted. If one ever was converted, he soon gave up his laziness. I tell you that laziness does not belong to Christ’s Kingdom. I do not believe a man would have a lazy hair in his head if he was converted to the Lord Jesus Christ. If a man has really been born of the Spirit of Christ, he is not lazy. He wants to find something to do, and no kind of manual labor is degrading. It is honorable. If our Master, who is the Prince of Peace and the King of Glory, could leave Heaven and come down here and work as a village carpenter, let us not think that manual labor is beneath our notice. Let us be willing to go out and work. If we can not find what we want, let us do what we can. If we can earn only twenty-five cents a day, let us earn that rather than do nothing. We not only want something to occupy our hands, but also our minds.
But this is not the point of the lecture this morning. I want to go back to those two wonderful men.