Sarah Jakes Roberts - The Prison and the Palace (01/17/2026)
- Watch
- Donate
- Contact Us
This sermon draws from Genesis 40, where Joseph, despite being imprisoned, serves and interprets dreams for Pharaoh’s butler and baker, showing that God uses prison seasons to prepare us for palace destinies. The preacher emphasizes that many feel stuck «in the balance» between promise and reality, but by tapping into our God-given purpose even in difficult times—remaining sensitive, humble, and faithful—we turn prisons into palaces internally. The key takeaway is that manifesting your gift faithfully in obscurity alerts Heaven, accelerates promotion, and proves you’re ready for the palace God has prepared, because true royalty comes from within.
Opening After Worship
When you have a worship experience that rich, I’m not even sure that the word is necessary, but I’ve studied, and you’re here, and the Gatekeepers are locking the doors, so you’re stuck. We’re going to go to Genesis 40, starting in verse two. My topic for today is «From the Prison to the Palace,» and I’m so excited about this word because I believe that some of us have found ourselves in the balance. When you find yourself in the balance, what should be a blessing starts to look like a prison.
A Season of Shift
There’s a season taking place; there’s a shift happening, not just because we’re moving into 2017, but because you are moving into a new version of yourself. God’s about to introduce you to who you’ve always been. He’s going to introduce you to why you had to go through the prisons that you went through, why you had to go through the breakdowns that you experienced. He’s about to make it all make sense in 2017, and so He wanted me to start preparing you in 2016 so that you recognize that you went to sleep in the prison, but you’re going to wake up in the palace; that you went to sleep thinking one way, and then you woke up and doors started flying open, and opportunities started becoming available to you.
I heard God saying, as you were worshiping, that your praise just paved the way; that your praise just broke through the atmosphere; that you were breaking weapons off as you were worshiping. I have just a few things to share with you in this time. We’re going to start with Genesis 40 to set it up. We’re going to meet Joseph in this scripture; we’re going to meet Joseph after he’s had a dream that everyone was going to bow down to him. Yet, incidentally, he had this dream at 17 years old, and then a decade or so down the road, he’s in a prison. Have you ever had God promise you something, and then the path your life started to take didn’t necessarily line up with what He said?
Joseph Meets the Butler and Baker
So, we find Joseph in a prison, and he has an encounter with two people. Pharaoh was angry with these two people, these two officers: the chief butler and the chief baker. As I was studying, I wondered why, of all the people, the chief butler and the chief baker were in trouble, and verse three continues, telling us that he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard, in the prison, the place where Joseph was confined. So we have Joseph, a butler, and a baker in prison.
When I was doing some research about the text, I recognized that a butler, that Hebrew word that they translated to butler, actually means cupbearer. I don’t know how many of you watch Game of Thrones after the One Church live stream, but a cupbearer has, arguably, one of the most important jobs in the kingdom because he holds the king’s cup, and because he holds the king’s cup, he ensures that it doesn’t get poisoned. He holds something that someone else has given him. There are different types of people and destinies in our lives. There are some people who are like the baker, who make something out of nothing, who take all of the ingredients that life has thrown at them and then form something that could have never been there otherwise.
Then there are people like the butler, who hold on to what’s been given to them. But something shaky happened between the butler and the baker because they had found themselves in prison, which is a message for you and me, in my opinion, to be careful who we allow to hold things and who we allow to make things in our lives. You see, if you get the positions mixed up, then you’ll have someone holding parts of you that they should have never had in the first place. If you give the wrong ingredients to the wrong person, then they’ll start making up ideas in your head or making up rumors, or making you start believing things that you should have never believed in the first place.
Taking Inventory of Your Circle
I want you to take inventory of who’s in your kingdom—who’s holding you down and who’s putting things together—and can you trust them? So we find that they do what we all do when we think someone is a little sketchy: we put them in a prison, a prison that keeps them close enough for us to touch them but far enough away to observe them. You see, if you don’t start putting people in their proper positions in your life, then you’ll be letting people run around free when God is trying to create a path in your destiny. Sometimes we can be so consumed with trying to all just get along that we make friends with our enemies because we don’t want to shake things up.
Because we don’t want to shake things up, we end up having destinies that are stagnated because we didn’t have the strength required to put people in prisons, to say that I’m not going to allow your opinions or your ideas or your actions to affect my destiny any longer. Are there people in your life who you should have placed in a prison but are running around so free that you can’t be free anymore? You see, if you don’t put people in their proper position, then they will organically put you in a prison. Now, all of a sudden, you can’t be who God has called you to be because it makes them uncomfortable. Now, all of a sudden, you’ve lost your voice because they were talking so much over you that you don’t even know who you are anymore.
I’m wondering if you have found yourself confined in a season when God wants you to be free. The captain of the guard charged Joseph with them, and he served them, so they were in custody for a while. I couldn’t get over Joseph, who had a dream that he would be king, serving the chief butler and the chief baker of the kingdom. I recognize that the irony of God is that sometimes He calls us to places where we have to humble ourselves in such a way that we’re serving the people who serve us or should be serving us. He puts us in positions where we may be smarter than the boss or we may have better ideas than certain people in our circles, but because of this season in our lives, He’s caused us to submit.
In the Balance
Though Joseph was certainly in a prison physically, I also wondered if he was in a prison because of who he had to become in order for God to use him in that moment. You see, everybody wants the destiny that leads to the palace, but so few of us have the humility to be in a prison to know that there is a call for our lives. Yet, so many of us don’t recognize the process that is a part of the call; that the process takes us through the prison, so we find ourselves behind bars, angry with God because we thought we would be at the palace by now. Joseph was in the balance; he was balancing the call of royalty with the reality of prison—the call that you’re supposed to be here, you’re supposed to be excelling, you’re supposed to be doing well, but right now, you can’t even make ends meet. You have the idea; you have the creativity, but you have no connections and no way to make anything happen. You finally got the man, but you’ve got all of these daddy issues that you haven’t faced yet. The fact is that you are in the balance: you’re almost where you should be, but you’re not quite there yet.
The captain of the guard charged Joseph with them, and he served them, so they were in custody for a while. Verse 5 continues: then the butler and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were confined in the prison, had a dream, both of them. Now, their dreaming in prison… dreaming in prison. It doesn’t look like I should have any dreams because right now, I should just be relegated to the fact that I’m in prison. But I still have a dream. I want to know if you can hang on to your dream in prison. Both of them each had a dream in one night, each man’s dream with its own interpretation.
Joseph’s Sensitivity in Prison
Verse 6 continues: Joseph came in to them in the morning and looked at them, and saw that they were sad. Joseph was sensitive enough, even though he was in prison, to recognize that the atmosphere had shifted around him. That means he didn’t allow the bitterness that overcomes some people to overtake him in such a way that he lost his sensitivity. I believe that God wants to make sure that He can still touch you even when you’re in prison, that He can still touch you even when things aren’t going your way, that He can still get a hold of you even when it looks like all the odds are against you. Joseph was sensitive, so much so that in verse 7, it says that he asked Pharaoh’s officers who were with him in the custody of his lord’s house: «Why do you look so sad today?» They said to him, «We each have had a dream, and there is no interpreter of it.» So Joseph said to them, «Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell them to me, please.»
This was so important because, at this very moment, though Joseph doesn’t know it, when he’s having this dialogue, his situation just shifted from being in the balance to freedom. Though he was still in the prison, there was no warden who came in after this moment and freed him, but something happened in this conversation. You have to read your Bible to really get the depth of what I’m saying; just read the whole Bible, and you’ll find that it will tell you more about this pivotal moment. There was something about him tapping into his purpose in the prison that freed him to walk into the palace. And I wanted to tell you tonight, very briefly, because we’ve already worshiped, that God is waiting to see if you can tap into your purpose in the prison; that if you won’t let the bars confine you, if you won’t let the bars restrict you, that He has something for you.
Turning Prison into Palace
But He wants to know if the prison is killing your purpose. Have you given up on that dream? Have you given up on what God has told you? He wants to know: can you praise Him anyway? Can you make the best out of a bad situation? Can you look at the statistics and look at the odds and say, «I’m going to worship you anyway»? He wants to know if you can make the prison a palace. Can you look at what everyone else says is a prison and say, «But because my God is here with me and because there’s a word down on the inside of me, I don’t care what it looks like to anybody else; this is a palace because I’m in it, and I am the righteousness of God»? You may not see the crown yet, but it’s shining on my head, and this place that He’s called me just became a palace because I just stepped into it. Anytime I step into the room, you should hear royalty coming. He wants to know if you can turn your prison into a palace; if you can praise Him with an eviction notice.
If you can praise Him when you’re about to lose that child; if you can praise Him when it looks like the walls are closing in on you, He wants to know if you can take this prison and turn it into a palace. Because the only way He can trust you with the palace is if He knows that you are really the palace, that it has nothing to do with what’s going on on the outside or what’s in your bank account or what people are saying about you; that ultimately, you are the palace. You are the righteousness of God; you are set aside; you are anointed and appointed, and there is no devil in hell that can stand against you. He wants to know if you know who you are; that even in a prison, even in your dark days, He is God, and because He is God, you are inside of Him, and He is inside of you. So it doesn’t matter what’s going on around you.
Because when He calls you to come forth, everything He’s placed inside of you will come out. You can put me in a prison, or you can put me in a palace; it doesn’t matter where you place me because I know what God put in me. That means I’m not afraid when I walk into meetings; I’m not afraid when I have these ideas because I know that this idea is a crown. This idea is a reminder that I’m royalty, that there’s not a mind on the planet like mine, that there’s not a gift on the planet like mine. You may do what you do, but you don’t do it like me, baby, because when I walk in the room, I’m bringing something different. This is a different flavor; you’ve never seen it like this before. There’s an authenticity that God wants you to walk into, and He doesn’t want to have to give you a palace for it to manifest. He wants it to manifest right now in a prison where it doesn’t make any sense, where it looks foolish, where it might make you look crazy.
Prison Prepares for Palace
He wants it to manifest right here because He needs you to recognize that royalty has no limitations. As I was studying, I realized that actually, the prison and the palace have a lot in common. There’s a wall that protects the palace, and there’s one that protects the prison. There are guards in the prison, and there are guards in the palace. So maybe if you learn to operate in a prison, it prepares you for the palace. Because what they don’t tell you about the other side of success is that the palace is a prison too—it’s just a different kind of prison, with different types of limitations and different kinds of restrictions. God had to put you in the prison first so you wouldn’t be surprised when you got to the palace and recognized that this isn’t freedom up here either.
That’s why the word says to be in the world but not of the world, because if you’re in the world, you’ll be living for a palace, but in reality, you need to be living for the moment where God manifests what He placed inside of you, where you have a moment with a butler and a baker, and you begin to interpret dreams. Joseph was serving the butler and the baker, but what tipped things in his favor was when they gave him the opportunity to interpret their dreams. Because that was Joseph’s gift—he could interpret dreams. I hear God saying that He’s going to give you opportunities to tap into your gift, and you shouldn’t care whether or not there’s an audience of 10,000 or an audience of one. All that matters is that the gift is manifest, because He’ll bring the people, and He’ll bring the finances, and He’ll bring the opportunities to you.
But He wants to know: can you manifest it when no one is looking? Can you manifest it when you don’t get any glory? Can you manifest what I’ve placed inside of you? Joseph eagerly tells them, «Could you please put verse eight back on the screen?» He eagerly tells them, «Tell me, please! Please tell me what you dream! Please give me one shot to tap into my gift! Give me one audition; give me one opportunity; give me one chance to write this book; give me one chance to get this job; give me one chance to serve you, because I’m betting on me! I know that God has placed something down on the inside of me that if you just give me one shot, if you just give me one opportunity, I don’t care if anybody hears about it— all that matters is I got an opportunity to do what God has called me to do!»
Manifesting in the Prison
I hear God saying that too many of you have adapted to the mindset of prisoners; that you’ve stopped dreaming the way you should dream, that you’ve stopped creating the way you should create, that you have forgotten that there is a palace outside of this prison, and you’ve allowed your disappointments and your discouragements to jade you, to change you, to make you believe that you can’t do it anymore; that you made the wrong decisions, that you made the wrong mistakes, that God isn’t really with you after all. I hear God saying that He just wanted to see if you would manifest it in a prison.
He just wanted to know if He could take you down low enough if you would give up. But when you begin to make the best out of this season, when you begin to manifest on the level that you will when you get to the palace, God says don’t wait until you get to the palace. Do it like you’re in the palace now; do it like the king is watching now; do it like they’re going to be talking about what happened in the prison, that it reaches the palace, because that’s exactly what happened in this text. He interprets the dreams, and if you continue reading on your own in your spare time, you’ll see that when the butler makes his way back to the palace, Pharaoh starts having dreams that no one can interpret, but the butler remembers that there was someone in a prison who could interpret dreams so accurately.
That means that Joseph didn’t even have to work his way up from the prison to the palace; God accelerated him in such a way that even when he was in the prison, when God calls you forth, you don’t have to worry about what you’re going to have to do to make it to the next level. You’re going to bypass the very people who were laughing at you. You’re going to bypass the very people who counted you out. You’re going to bypass the very people who said, «He’s not good enough; he’s not going to make it, ” and you’re going to look up, and you’re going to be back in the palace. Hallelujah! The very place that God told you He was going to put you.
Worship Alerts Heaven
When you were worshiping earlier, it was a moment like when Joseph had an encounter with the butler and the baker. You have alerted Heaven that you are ready to move to the next level. You have alerted Heaven that you’re ready to stretch to the next level. You have alerted Heaven that you have graduated from this level and that He can trust you with more. You have alerted Heaven that you’re ready, that you can handle it. This year tried to shake you and change you, and it made you question yourself, but when the moment came and you were down in the prison, you stretched out to the One and Only God who can pull you from the prison to the palace.
Some of you are about to break through into something that eyes haven’t seen, that ears haven’t heard, neither has it entered into the hearts of men what God has in store for you. You’re about to surprise yourself when God gets finished with you. You’re going to say, „You thought all of this of me.“ No longer do I see you in the balance, but I see you thriving; I see you influencing; I see you gravitating toward people who understand your value, who understand your gift, who understand that sometimes you have to go to the prison to make a path to the palace.
Altar Call for Those in Prison Seasons
That’s all I’ve got to say. If you don’t have to leave, please don’t leave, because I want to have an altar call with people who’ve been struggling with being in the prison, who’ve been struggling to hang on to hope and hang on to faith and hang on to the fact that God has a promise for their lives, and that you’re ready to change your mindset about where you are right now. You no longer want to see it as punishment; you want God to open your eyes to the blessing of being in prison. Hallelujah! You want God to open your eyes so that a path is clear.
You know what I recognize? If you begin to only see yourself in a prison, then you’ll never be able to see your way to the palace because the prison makes you believe that there’s nothing else out there; that this is all there is to life. There’s nothing more, so you can’t dream anymore, you can’t think anymore—that all you’ll ever have is what you’ve got right now. The only person you’ll ever attract is someone who hurts you; the only opportunities you’ll ever get are ones that don’t even make you feel like you have enough stability. The only jobs that are available to you are ones that you are far more experienced to be in.
The only thing that is available to you is a prison. If you’re honest, you’ve been beginning to question yourself more and more. You’ve been beginning to listen to that voice of negativity and doubt on the inside of you so much that you feel yourself giving up on yourself. You recognize that you’re not as excited as you used to be; you’re not as sensitive as you used to be; you’re not as sure; you’re not as certain that the palace is even for you. The palace is for those other people—the ones who did everything the right way, the ones who don’t have to struggle, the ones who know people who know people. The palace isn’t for me.
But God wants you to know on this Wednesday night that not only is the palace for you; the palace is yours. Not only is this opportunity for you; this opportunity is going to catapult you into heights you can’t even imagine. Sometimes God takes us lower than we ever thought possible so that when we get to the highest point that He has for us, we recognize we didn’t get there on our own—that it was because we kept Him with us even in our darkest days, that He could trust us to go even further. This message is for those who are wondering whether or not there’s a path out for them, and I have to ask if there’s anyone else who is sitting out there who feels a tugging of the Holy Spirit telling them, „You know you’ve got to go.“
Don’t let your pride stand in the way of your breakthrough. Don’t let the idea of other people recognizing that you’ve been struggling stand in the way of you getting the help that you actually need. As we were worshiping earlier, I saw blessings being unlocked, but you have to be willing to humble yourself like Joseph to admit that you found yourself locked up. You don’t even know how it happened, but here you are, and you’re crazy enough to believe that you’re still supposed to inherit things, that God still has things stored up and locked up for you, even though you’re locked up right now.
So don’t let this jail cell fool you; don’t let these chains fool you. When God gets finished with me, all you’re going to see are chains breaking off of me. You’re going to see strongholds coming down. I’m not even going to look the same when God gets finished with me because what God has for you is for you, and there’s nothing you have done that has disqualified you from what God has for you. Even that one thing that came to your mind that says, „Well, she doesn’t know about this, ” even that has not disqualified you. He knows the essence of who you are; He knows every secret, every struggle, and He still loves you, and He still has a purpose for you—crazy, weird, freaky, crazy again! Two times! Still His child, broken, confused, lost, abused—still His child, and He has a place for you.
He’s reserved it just for you, and He’s waiting for you to recognize that you’re still worthy of the treasures that He has stored up in this world, on this earth. There are treasures stored up in this earth that, if you would just tap into Him, if you would just tap into His voice, you would begin to unleash the things that God has for you. I’m going to ask my husband to pray an impartation of what God has placed inside of him, inside of us, because from the prison to the palace, he’s been able to manifest something that has set him apart for decades—set him apart in such a way that there is no other church like One LA on the planet.
He was willing to manifest that, and he didn’t even know if you were coming; he was going to manifest it if it was nothing but the butler and the baker. But God said, „No, there is a royal priesthood that needs your voice; there are my sons and daughters who no one can reach but you.“ And because he tapped into that, you can tap into yours, and the lives connected to your purpose are going to tap into theirs. And that’s what we call kingdom- that’s what we call light chasing darkness, because we tap into the rhythm of this earth that says, „I’ve got a divine purpose that’s bigger than my issues and bigger than your opinions and bigger than your rumors; that God gave me something that I have to bring forth no matter what, and because He gave it to me, I’m going to protect it and hold on to it.“