The Prison Test

Welcome to Worship in the Word with Pastor Robert Morris. We're about halfway through Pastor Robert's From Dream to Destiny series where we discuss character building tests from the life of Joseph that we all must pass on the way to our dreams and God-ordained destiny. Well, today Pastor Robert is sharing on the prison test, which is a test of perseverance. There are some really great insights that Pastor Robert has to share, so let's tune in with him now. We're in a series called Dream to Destiny.

Every person has a God-given dream and every person has a God-given destiny. And we're basing this on the life of Joseph, the 10-character test that Joseph had to pass to fulfill his destiny. And this week we're going to talk about the prison test. If you remember last week, we talked about how Potiphar's wife tried to seduce him. He did the right thing and yet she lied about it and he goes to prison.

So we're going to talk about the prison test, all right? Genesis 39, beginning in verse 13. And so it was when she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and fled outside, that she called to the men of her house and spoke to them saying, See, he has brought in, he, referring to Potiphar, he has brought in to us a Hebrew to mock us. He came in to me to lie with me and I cried out with a loud voice.

She just told an outright lie. And it happened when he heard that I lifted my voice and cried out that he left his garment with me and fled and went outside. So she kept his garment with her until his master came home. Then she spoke to him with words like these saying, The Hebrew servant whom you brought to us came in to me to mock me. And so it happened as I lifted my voice and cried out that he left his garment with me and fled outside.

And so it was when his master heard the words which his wife spoke to him, saying, Your servant did to me after this manner, that his anger was aroused. Then Joseph's master took him and put him into the prison, a place where the king's prisoners were confined. And he was there in the prison, but the Lord was with Joseph.

Notice God will always be with you through every trial. And showed him mercy, and he gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. And the keeper of the prison committed to Joseph's hand all the prisoners who were in the prison, whatever they did there, it was his doing. The keeper of the prison did not look into anything that was under Joseph's authority because the Lord was with him and whatever he did, the Lord made it prosper. Now I want you to notice something about these last few verses that we read that I haven't even brought out in this series yet, but every test has to do with stewardship.

Every test. How well would Joseph steward his actions? How well would he steward what belonged to another man, including another man's wife? How well would he steward his own body?

How would he steward his own attitude? So all ten tests have to do with stewardship. Please understand, and we'll talk a little bit more about this as we go on, but you will not fulfill your destiny that God has for you if you're not a good steward.

We have to become good stewards. Now the prison test in particular is the test of perseverance. It is talking about God developing character in our lives through things that we go through and persevering through those things. So now flip over to Romans chapter 5, and I want to show you what I feel is a formula for character. We've talked about all through this series that in order for us to fulfill our destiny, we have to allow God to work character into our lives. I'm excited about this series because it seems like in every message there's a formula, or there are some keys, or there are some simple steps that we can do to pass that test.

I think it's the same for this test. Romans chapter 5, look at verse 3. It says that not only that, and it's referring to verses 1 and 2, talking about the grace by which we stand, that we stand by grace. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance.

And perseverance, character. Now the implied verb here is produces again. Remember he's already said the word produces.

That's the verb. So tribulation produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character, hope, or produces hope. Now hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. Now I want you to notice it says we glory in tribulation. Now there are two Greek words for glory.

The first one is used nearly all the time. It's used 138 times in the New Testament. And it means the outshining. When it speaks of the glory of God, it means how God shines, or when you look at God, it's what you see. This word is used very often for glory here. It means rejoice.

Here's what this actually says. We rejoice in tribulation. The root of this word, by the way, means wish or pray. In other words, we wish or pray for tribulation because it's going to cause us to rejoice. Now why in the world would it cause us to rejoice? Well, I got four points for you, all right?

Here's number one. Tribulation produces perseverance. And I took it right out of the word. Romans 5, verse 3. Tribulation produces perseverance. Now let me explain something to you, all right? You don't have to wish for or pray for tribulation.

It will find you. John 16, 33, Jesus said, in the world, you will have tribulation. That's Jesus, so it's going to happen. But be of good cheer, I've overcome the world. But it says that we rejoice in tribulation.

Think about this. There's another scripture almost similar to that. James 1, 2, and 3. My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. Now I want you to notice, trials produce patience.

Tribulation produces perseverance. So I'm going to explain to you what patience and perseverance are and what trials and tribulation are. First of all, let me tell you what patience is. Patience is waiting with contentment. It's not just waiting for something. It's not tapping your foot, looking at your watch. That's not patience. Patience is keeping your heart right while you wait for something.

It's what you do when you're at the drive-thru line at the bank. I know that it never bothers you that the line you're in is the slowest. I know that. I know you don't get upset. I know you don't look at your watch. I know you don't yell at the person in front of you. I know. I know.

But let me say this. If you want to go through the drive-thru line quickly at the bank, never, never get behind me. Because no matter which line I choose, it is obvious to me that the person in front of me is depositing thousands of pennies. And that he's never seen a tube before. Because the tube comes, when he gets the tube, it's like it's in his car for like five minutes. I don't know if he's fascinated by it or what. And I bank at a place, by the way, that has, where the tube comes back, it's see-through. You know?

Because I want some encouragement. I want to see the tube coming back. I was at another bank and you couldn't see it.

I changed banks. I want to see the tube. And then let me just tell you something that's wrong. Some of you do this and you don't know what's wrong. Listen. The tube comes back. You know, I go from park to drive.

I'm ready to go. And then the person sends the tube back again. You cannot send the tube back. You have one chance to get your money. Get your money and go. And if you have to send the tube back, go inside. It's not right to send the tube back, all right? You can't figure it out how to do it one time. Get out of line.

Go to another bank. Now, that is not patience. Patience is waiting with contentment, thinking, oh, praise the Lord.

I'm going to read my Bible and while they're, okay. So anyway, that's what patience would be, all right? What's perseverance? Perseverance is fighting the battle while you're waiting with contentment. In other words, perseverance involves a war. It involves a battle. It involves something difficult.

Let me tell you why. A trial is brief. Tribulation is long. So tribulation produces perseverance and you just need to know that perseverance is a long trial. For Joseph, it was 13 years. By the way, I don't know what God has about 13 years, but David was an anointed king and then for 13 years, he ran from Saul before he served as king. Paul, by the way, was in the church at Antioch for 13 years before he went on his first missionary journey. So I don't know what God has about 13 years, but I think the least amount is 13 years. Let me just state that, all right? And some of you might be thinking, well, hey, I've been in a trial longer than 13 years, pastor.

What do you have to say about that? Well, Abraham's lasted 25 years. Well, it's been longer. Okay, Moses was 40 years.

I probably got everybody there and you might say, well, it's been longer than 40. Okay, well, some of the children of Israel never got to their destiny. It's very possible, listen, that our response to our circumstances determine how long the trial lasts. So tribulation produces perseverance.

Here's number two. Perseverance produces character. As I said a moment ago, I looked through the Bible to see if anything else produced character. Here's how I'd like to get character. I would like to ask someone who has character to pray for me.

Wouldn't that be great? You know, pastor so-and-so, doctor so-and-so, well, you lay hands on me and pray for me and then I could have character. No, you have to go through a long and difficult trial. And that's how you get character. Perseverance produces character. This is right out of Romans chapter 5. Listen to this. The worst thing, if you have authority or if you have resource, let me say this to you, the worst thing you can do for someone, the worst thing you can do for someone is to promote them before they're ready or deliver them out of a trial that God is taking them through to work character in their life.

It's the worst thing you can do. All through Scripture, we have this, that this perseverance works character in life. And Joseph was a man of great ability. I mean, everywhere he goes, he rises to the number two person. He's in Potiphar's house, he becomes number two. Potiphar doesn't look into anything that's under his hand.

It says that. He goes to the prison, the keeper of the prison, he becomes number two. Keeper of the prison doesn't look into anything under his hand. Then he becomes number two to Pharaoh. Pharaoh, here's what it says again.

Pharaoh didn't look into anything that was under his hand. So obviously, he's a man of great ability. But was it his ability or was it God's favor that produced this?

That's what we have to understand. Now, I think Joseph prolonged his period in the prison just a little bit. And we're using Joseph as an example, but obviously, he's a human, so he didn't do everything perfectly.

But he did a lot of things great. Let me read you a scripture. Genesis 40, if you remember, the butler and the baker each have a dream and he interprets their dreams. And then after the, he says to the baker, you know, in three days, you're going to die. He's actually going to cut your head off.

It was a very encouraging prophecy. And then he says to the butler, three days he's going to raise you back up, Pharaoh, and you'll be his butler again. All right, then he says in verse 14 of Genesis 40 to the butler, but remember me when it is well with you. And please show kindness to me. Make mention of me to Pharaoh and get me out of this house.

Now, isn't that amazing? Now listen, when he raises you up, don't forget to mention me. And then if you look down at verse 23, it says, yet the chief butler did not remember Joseph but forgot him. Now, again, I was telling you the baker and the butler, baker you're going to lose your head, butler you're going to be restored. So he tells the butler, remember me.

Doesn't do any good to tell someone to remember something, you know, that doesn't have a head. So, he told the butler to. But it says the butler didn't remember him. He forgot. I don't know if you ever thought about this, but two years later, Pharaoh has a dream. And the butler says, hey, I know someone that can interpret dreams, but it's two years later.

Now, think with me for a moment. Who gave Pharaoh the dream? God did. Why didn't God give Pharaoh the dream two days later instead of two years later?

Here's my opinion. My opinion is that Joseph interprets the dream. He ministers to these guys. And God says, well, that's so good. Here he is in prison.

He's still ministering to people. And then he says, oh, but don't forget, drop a hint. Drop a hint. And God goes, oop, not quite ready. Because if I promote him now, he'll think the way to get ahead is by dropping hints. Listen to me carefully. God never, never rewards manipulation.

Never. I think God waited two years because Joseph's character wasn't ready to support the destiny. And listen, it's God's grace that he doesn't put you in the destiny before you're ready to fulfill the destiny because then you'd fall.

He's waiting on your character to be big enough to support the destiny. My wife and I have been blessed with great resources because we love to give. Everybody knows we love to give.

We talk a lot about that. And the Lord has blessed the books that I've written. And so we now have tremendous resource to be able to help people and bless people. And we love to bless people. I also have tremendous authority, responsibility.

We have a very large staff. I can't tell you the number of times that I've been just about to bless someone financially or about to promote someone and the person drops a hint to me and tries to manipulate the situation. And here's what I think. Thank you, Lord. Lord, I was just about to do something that would not have been a blessing. I thought it would have been a blessing, but it would not have been a blessing because the person's not ready for that.

Please hear me. We've got to stop manipulating situations and allow God to be the one who rewards us and blesses us. So tribulation produces perseverance. Perseverance produces character.

Here's number three. Character produces hope. Character produces hope. Remember this is right out of Romans 5.

I'm not making this stuff up. Character produces hope. Now let me tell you something about character. Character is not only how we act. We talk a lot about character is how you act. A guy will act right if he has character. Well, that's true. But character is not only how we act.

Listen, it's how we react. Joseph did the right thing and suffered the wrong consequences. Now I could ask you, has that ever happened to you?

You ever done the right thing and someone misinterpreted it or did something wrong or accused you of doing something or spread rumors about you or lied about you that weren't true, told lies about you? That's exactly what happened to Joseph. Joseph did the right thing and suffered the wrong results.

By the way, have you ever thought about this? What was the evidence that got him in trouble this time? I just want to show you how Satan has no new tricks. Do you remember that Satan produced evidence?

This is an earlier message. He produced evidence to support the lie that Joseph had been torn to pieces by wild animals. What was the evidence that he produced to support that lie? A coat, Joseph's coat, right?

What was the evidence that Satan used to support the lie that Joseph had tried to rape Potiphar's wife? His coat. If I'd been Joseph, I'd never worn another coat.

It could be 20 degrees. I could see Joseph. He sat in the freezer and said, you want to borrow my coat? Get behind me, Satan.

I don't want a coat. Now, I use that as a humorous reference, but let me just say this. What is it that Satan keeps tricking you with? We talked last week about lust.

Is it the internet? Put some safeguards in place. Use the computer for a boat anchor if you have to. But get rid of it, man.

Do whatever you have to because Satan has no new tricks. Whatever he's used to capture you in the past, he'll use it again in the future. That was really good, by the way. That wasn't even in my notes. Okay, all right.

Here we go. Let me show you one other thing about hope. Proverbs 13, 12 says, Hope deferred makes the heart sick.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick. Now, you remember Joseph interprets the dream of the butler and the baker, and I'm going to show you that in just a moment. But what that shows me is that he didn't have a sick heart because he was still concerned about others. He didn't have a pity party. He wasn't just looking at himself or his own needs. He was thinking about others and how to minister to others and how to help others around him. That shows me he didn't have a sick heart.

Now, listen to me. That shows me that for the most part, other than maybe a few slip-ups, he kept his heart right before God. Hope, listen carefully, hope is not that God will deliver you from your circumstances. That's not hope. Hope is that God will help you walk through your circumstances. That's hope. Our hope is in God, not in our circumstances changing. Because our hope is in our circumstances changing, the longer it goes without changing, the more our heart grows sick. And here's the last point. Hope produces appointments.

Hope produces appointments. Now, remember, let me just remind you of Romans 5, and I'll show you where I got this. Verse 3 says, I don't know if you know this, but that scripture there, Hope does not disappoint, that's a double negative. Because the prefix dis means not. Think about the words approve, disapprove. Approve, disapprove. If someone disapproves, he does not approve. So when it says hope does not disappoint, it means hope does not not appoint. So you take the two nots out. I see some of your eyes just glazed over, I'm sorry.

But grammatically, here's what this statement says. Hope appoints. Hope appoints.

This is why I say hope produces appointments. Listen to me carefully. I know you're going through tribulation, because we all are. We're in the world. Jesus said if you're in the world, you're going to go through tribulation. So we're all going through some form of tribulation. That tribulation will produce perseverance in our lives. That perseverance, if we respond correctly, will produce character.

That character will produce hope. And hope, listen, will produce a divine appointment for us to step into our destiny. That's what we just saw in scripture. That's what happened because here is Joseph in prison, and here's what it says in Genesis 40. It says, verse 6 and 7, Joseph came into them in the morning and looked at them, this is the butler and the baker, and saw that they were sad.

So he asked Pharaoh's officers who were with him in the custody of his Lord's house, saying, why do you look so sad today? It produced, because he still had hope in his life, it produced a divine appointment. You know what a divine appointment is, don't you? It's an appointment God has for you. By the way, that's what disappointment means. It means you missed an appointment. That's what, we get disappointed because we believe we missed an appointment that God had for us.

A job, a raise, a promotion, a relationship, something with our family, that's where disappointment is a missed appointment. That's what it is. He kept his heart right, and by keeping his heart right, it produced a divine appointment.

That divine appointment led to him stepping into his destiny. That's what I'm telling you. So I understand you're going through tribulation.

I understand that. If you respond correctly, though, you'll develop perseverance. That perseverance will develop character in your life. That character will develop hope, and that hope will produce an appointment for you to step into your destiny.

Isn't that a great formula? It's right there in Scripture. Now let me just say one other thing. I drew some analogies of Joseph in a previous message. Joseph is an Old Testament type of Christ.

Now let me explain something theologically to you, all right? Because you might hear another pastor say, Moses is an Old Testament type of Christ. And you might think, no, Joseph is. Our pastor told us Joseph was.

There are many Old Testament types of Christ in the Bible. Moses was. David was. Solomon was. Isaiah was. Isaiah spoke about aversion, conceiving, and burying a child.

He didn't even know what he was saying. And the government will rest upon his shoulder, and he shall be called great. He shall be called the Prince of Peace. Okay, so Almighty God. Okay, so Everlasting Father.

Let me just finish the verse, okay. Ezekiel was an Old Testament type of Christ. Daniel was an Old Testament type of Christ. Abraham, so the point is the Old Testament is pointing to Christ.

That's the point, okay? So Joseph was, let me tell you a couple of ways. Joseph was numbered with the prisoners, although he did nothing wrong. Jesus was numbered with the prisoners, although he did nothing wrong. Joseph was specifically numbered with two prisoners, the butler and the baker. One of those prisoners was condemned, one was set free. Jesus was numbered with two thieves, two prisoners.

One was condemned by his own heart, and one was set free by his own heart. Joseph said to the butler, remember me, but the butler didn't. The thief on the cross said to Jesus, remember me, and Jesus did.

Here's the last thing I want to tell you. Even if people forget and don't keep their word to you, Jesus will never forget, and he will keep his word to you. We want you to take a moment to think about what Pastor Robert shared today and listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying to you. If you want to connect with us or check out some of Pastor Robert's other messages, visit pastorrobert.com. And if you haven't already, go follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter so we can be a part of your community. We hope you found today's message encouraging and uplifting. We're so glad you tuned in with us, and we pray that you have a blessed week.