Navigating Life Challenges #1 - Navigating Pain (Dr. Kurt Bjorklund)

Let's pray together.

God, as we're gathered this weekend, we thank you for the ways that you're working in and through Orchard Hill to bring about changed lives.

And God, in this moment, we ask that you would work in the lives of each of us who are gathered.

God, if I've prepared things that don't reflect your heart, I pray you'd prompt me away from them.

And if there are things that would be beneficial in this moment for those of us who are gathered, I pray that you'd prompt me toward those as well, even if it wasn't in my original preparation.

And God, we pray this today in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So let me ask you this.

If you were to look back over the last season of your life, what would you say has been most painful in your life?

My guess is, in just asking that question, that many of you would very quickly be able to say, well, it's been this.

Maybe it's been a physical challenge or a sickness for you or somebody close to you.

Maybe it's been a disappointment in relationship.

Maybe there's a broken relationship somewhere in your world, and you just say that has been painful.

Maybe the relationship hasn't been broken.

It's just been disappointing.

Maybe you're sitting right now just feeling like you can't even tell the person next to you some of the hurt that you feel in the lack of connection.

Maybe you've hoped for that baby, and the monthly pregnancy test comes back with a color that you don't want.

Maybe it's been a financial challenge or a frustration with work or a child who's made choices that you say that that just isn't what you need, or maybe you felt alone and the longing for somebody to partner in your life just hasn't come along, and you just say, this has been been hard in my life.

And we rightly spend a lot of our lives trying to avoid pain.

And the reason I say rightly is of course we do.

We try to arrange our lives in such a way that we can avoid experiencing pain.

And yet pain finds its way into almost every one of our lives and eventually probably to every one of our lives.

And so even though we make this effort to avoid pain, it becomes part of our lives.

And some of us will, as a result of this, will say, Well, I'm not going to take any risks.

I'm not going to try anything.

I'm not going to put myself out there.

I'm not going to be in relationships because I don't want to be hurt.

And some of us may choose instead just to deal with the pain that we do have by numbing.

And by numbing, what I mean is we'll take on something that we'll just say, this will make me forget about it for a while.

Maybe it's indulge in TV watching or shopping or a substance of some kind that we use just to say, I don't have to think about what's what's hard in my life right now.

And yet when things are quiet and we feel the pain of what we've experienced, sometimes we just say, I find that that I still spiral a little bit.

But what if there was another way?

What if there was a different approach to pain that we could utilize throughout our lives to navigate the hardships that are somewhat inevitable?

We're starting a series today that we're calling navigating life's uh challenges.

And today we're looking specifically at pain, and we're going to be looking at the Old Testament character of Joseph and his life is chronicled for us in Genesis 37 through 50.

And we're going to just look at some of the most iconic moments in this account and try to learn a little bit about navigating pain.

And if you've been around Orchard Hill, you've probably heard me say this, but it is worth saying again anytime we start a series, especially on an Old Testament character.

The point of the Old Testament is not to basically say, here's Joseph, so pick out the good things Joseph does and go be like Joseph, or to pick out the bad things that he does and say, Well, don't be like him there.

Because what happens if we read the Bible that way, we basically read the Old Testament like one of Aesop's fables, and we say, Well, Joseph did that right, so do that, or he did that poorly, so don't do that.

And what I want to do today is move us from thinking about Joseph to thinking about God.

Because Joseph's God can be your God.

Maybe Joseph's God is your God, because it's the God of the universe.

And if you learn how to relate to God by looking at Joseph's story, then you can learn to navigate pain.

And so today we're going to do this by looking first just at the circumstances that we read in Genesis 37 that were painful for Joseph.

We're going to look at what was below the circumstances, then we'll look at what happened in the circumstances, and ultimately at what takes place above the circumstances.

And here's where we'll start is just the circumstances.

Now the story is pretty straightforward.

We read it in Genesis 37, and what we see is that Joseph was one of uh 12 kids, 12 sons, and and he was the second to last, and there were multiple wives and women involved.

That's a whole nother message.

Um we'll have Pastor Brady deal with that at some point.

But but but but the issue here was that because it was one of uh Jacob's or Israel's same name in the text, favorite wives, Joseph was his favorite son, even though there was another one behind him.

And so he favored him.

And what happened was Joseph kind of kind of didn't have awareness maybe of how this made his brothers feel.

And so what he did is he had this dream and he went and told his brothers.

And the dream is all of you will one day bow down to me.

Now, if you've ever had brothers or siblings and you've tried this whole thing, hey, I'm gonna be greater than all of you, you're gonna bow down to me.

That probably doesn't go over super well.

And after the first one, he has a second one and he goes and does it again.

He tells them the whole thing.

And on top of this, his dad gives him this coat that was very ornate, that that basically set him out from his brothers.

And so his brothers are annoyed.

And in the text, we see several things that are part of this.

In verse 11, we see that his brothers were jealous of him.

Here's what it says his brothers were jealous of him.

Okay, so so so the text just says the brothers looked at him and said, I don't like the status that you have.

I don't like your coat.

I don't care much for you at all.

Then in verse 18, we're told that they plotted his death.

So their jealousy moved from, we don't like the status that you have, to let's kill you.

Okay, I mean that's a quick elevation, uh, without a doubt.

Verse 18 says it this way, but they saw him at a distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him.

So his dad had said, Go check on your brothers.

They're out tending flocks.

So he had kind of a more cushy role, and he was sent out to check, and as they saw him coming, they're like, Ah, I don't like that guy.

Let's take his life.

And then verse 20, we see that there is probably some mocking.

It says this, come now, let's kill him and throw him into this cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him.

Then we'll see what comes of his dreams.

Can't you almost hear it here?

Let's see what happens to you, dreamer boy.

You're in the cistern, we're in charge, you're not.

How's that bowing down to you thing going now?

Is probably what was happening.

And then in verse 25, we see this, and that is there's some cold indifference.

And I say this because it says this as they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead.

Their camels were loaded with spices, balm, and myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt.

Now, why do I say that's cold indifference?

Uh uh just imagine with me for a moment that you're one of the brothers here.

So you have a brother, your brother comes, you don't like the brother, you're plotting to kill him.

That's your plan.

You throw him in a cistern, and what does the text say?

They sat down to eat.

I don't know about you, but but sitting down to eat while you're planning to off your brother feels a little cold in this moment.

And that's what they were doing.

They're like, Would you pass the lamb chop?

Well, their brother's about to be killed, and then there's hypocrisy, verse 27, and we see this because it says, Come, let's sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay hands on him.

After all, he is our brother.

And the reason I say this is hypocrisy is because if he's your brother, you don't sell him into slavery to never be seen again and fake his death to your dad.

And yet that's what they do.

And then Reuben comes along, and this is in verse 29.

And I would just say, this is too little, too late.

When Reuben returned to the cistern and he saw that Joseph was not there, so now he's been sold, he's on his way to Egypt in this caravan.

It says he tore his clothes and he went back to his brothers and said, The boy isn't there.

Where can I turn now?

And so Reuben, whether this was well intentioned or not, even his attempt to intervene was too little, too late.

Now, I walk through all of this because here's the tendency that maybe you have, I have.

And that is when we experience pain, we often think, well, my circumstances are uniquely challenging and hard.

Okay, anybody know what I'm talking about?

Now, I'm not suggesting that your situation is not uniquely challenging and hard.

It is.

Whatever you're walking through is hard.

But here's what I want you to see: God's people from the earliest pages of the Bible were never exempt from hard situations.

And so when we say that's really hard, this is so hard, nobody has experienced it like me.

If God loved me, he wouldn't.

God's people have always experienced hardship.

But in many ways, this isn't the hardest part.

And this is where we need to move below the circumstances.

And I would suggest here that what's below the circumstances first is loneliness.

Now the text doesn't say this explicitly, but when I say there's loneliness, what I mean is that imagine again that you're sold, you're in a caravan, going to Egypt, you're gonna live in a foreign land, new language, new whole everything in your life, no chance to go back.

You'd probably feel a little lonely.

I remember years ago talking to somebody who was walking through a divorce, and this person just simply said, you know, the hardest part is at night when it's quiet.

Because the quiet is deafening.

You see, loneliness on top of everything else can sometimes drive just deeper and deeper pain.

For Joseph, there was probably betrayal.

Obviously, his brothers sold him, so that's where I'm getting this.

It's one thing to have somebody at a distance do something that's hurtful to us, but some of the hardest pain that we walk through is when somebody close to us, somebody we trusted, somebody we have given to, somebody we've cared about, somebody we've sacrificed for turns on us in some way.

And for Joseph, this was certainly true.

And then there's broken dreams.

Literally, he had a dream that one day he would rule and that his brothers would bow down to him.

And he saw this as something from God.

And here he is in the cistern, in the caravan, in Potiphar's house, and in all of it, he had to have this moment of just saying, My dreams are gone.

What I hope for, it's not gonna happen.

You see, whatever it is that you're walking through, whatever I walk through, those things can be hard, but it's often what's below the circumstance, whether it be loneliness, betrayal, broken dreams.

For Joseph, the text doesn't say this, but there was probably desperation, despair.

Like, like my life as I know it is done.

Now, as you and I hear this story, we have maybe an advantage over Joseph as he lived it, in the sense of we've seen the musical, right?

Or you've read the text, whichever it is.

And when I say that, what I mean is you know that Joseph goes to Potiphar's house, he goes to prison, and then one day this whole dream thing comes true because there's a famine in the land, he rises to become uh second in command of the land of Egypt, he provides food for the entire region, takes everyone's real estate, which is why, again, you can't say that you just do what Joseph did because that wasn't cool.

But but but what he does is is he provides, and and so you have this perspective to be able to say, well, I know that it isn't as bad as it looks.

But here's what's hard when you and I walk through something, and that is we don't have the luxury of saying, well, in 13 years, this is gonna turn around.

We live through it day by day, saying, I don't know, will the loneliness end?

Will the feeling of betrayal get any better?

Will will the dream come true?

And that leads us to what happened in the circumstances.

And in this instance, I'm just going to say that there were two things, and this is more by omission in this text than it is by statement.

And we have to keep reading through the text, so I'm gonna uh jump ahead just a little bit here.

But but the first thing is that Joseph never compromised.

And what I mean is he, when he had the chance in Potiphar's house to turn on Potiphar and and and kind of meet some of his own desires, maybe, he didn't do it.

He said, How can I do this great evil and sin against God?

When he had a chance to take revenge on his brothers or on the the cupbearer who didn't tell the the the Pharaoh about him, he didn't take revenge, he didn't compromise.

And one of our great temptations when we're in pain is to say, I need to feel good, I need to feel good now.

And since God hasn't been good to me around this area of my life, I'm just gonna do what I think is gonna make me feel good.

And Joseph was willing to say, I'm still gonna please God, even when I'm in a place that isn't pleasing to me.

But not only did he not compromise, he also never complained, as far as we can tell.

Now, you might hear this and hear me saying, in essence, well, okay, so just don't complain.

But I think we need to understand a little bit about what complaining is.

In Philippians chapter 2, there's a place, this New Testament letter, so this is a direct command.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

And and here what this is is a statement.

Here's the command, verse 14.

Do everything without grumbling or arguing.

Now you may hear that and just say, well, okay, grumbling, arguing, he's saying the same thing.

It's two words that mean essentially the same thing, like don't complain.

But I think it's actually two elements of what it is when we complain.

They're two different unique words in the original language, and here's what I think these ultimately mean.

I think when it says, don't grumble, that that is the version of saying, I deserve better.

This isn't what I deserve.

Part of complaining is a mindset that says, God has done me wrong, I deserve something better than what I'm getting.

And the other element is this word arguing.

It means to dispute.

And the idea here is to say, I know better.

So on one hand, complaining is saying, I deserve better, and on the other hand, it's saying, I know better.

God's got this messed up somewhere here.

He he didn't he didn't come through the way that I know that he should.

And that's what it is to complain, but we don't see any evidence of this in Joseph.

Now, as I mentioned, if we wanted to kind of read this and say, so Joseph is our model, we could stop right here.

And what I could do is I could say, so go home and be like Joseph.

Don't compromise, don't complain.

Okay?

Whatever you're walking through, that's the answer.

And here's what would happen: you'd walk out and probably say, Okay, I'm gonna try hard not to compromise, not to complain, and it would last till tomorrow.

Probably in some ways, because if it's if it's out of our own strength, what happens is we just try to muster it.

And this is why I say we want to ultimately look above the circumstances.

Because it's what's above the circumstances that helps us to say, I can address pain differently in my life.

And what's above the circumstances is God, and more specifically, it's the providence of God.

Now, Joseph had this dream, and he believed this dream was God saying, One day you will rule, your brothers will bow to you.

And we know, again, because we've read the story, you've seen the musical, that that he actually gets to this point where his brothers come and he feeds them, gives them food, because he's the one who's able to do this in this environment.

And so we know that it works out, but in the middle of it, he had this choice to say, do I believe that God's hand is on me when I'm in the cistern, when I'm in the caravan, when I'm in prison, when I'm in a foreign land, and in every situation in between.

And what it requires is a belief that even in our darkest moments, God's hand has not abandoned us.

But God is still sovereign, that his providence is still in action.

Here's how the Heidelberg Catechism defines providence.

It says providence is the ever-presence, almighty power of God, ever-present, almighty power of God, by which he upholds the heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that blade and leaf, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty, all things, in fact, come to us not by chance, but from his fatherly hand.

And the reason I read this Heidelberg catechism from generations ago now is to say this is what Christians have always believed about God.

That there aren't accidents, that God's hand is orchestrating things.

And at first, when you hear that, you may say, Well, that actually makes my pain worse because now I feel like somehow God had a hand in it.

But maybe a better way to think about this, and this is in a book I read about this passage, is to think about it a little bit like computer chess.

And I'm not much of a chess player, but because I'm not much of a chess player, this illustration works.

If you play chess against a computer and you put the slider up high enough, do you know what happens?

Whatever move you make, it almost doesn't matter because it will crush you.

Because at some point it just says, You may think you're ahead of me, but I'm ahead of you.

And I'm bringing this to my end.

Now, now, where this doesn't work is computer chess is malevolent, it's it's out to get you.

But God, if you're his child, is for you, and therefore, whatever it is that you choose, whether it's a mistake, whether it's somebody else's choice, whether you make a wrong move, a good move, God is orchestrating everything to an end.

That's what it means to be somebody who believes, or what providence means, and what it means to believe in providence.

In fact, Helen Keller, who is noted for having been blind and challenged in many ways, but a follower of Christ once wrote this.

She says, When one door closes after another opens, another opens.

After one door closes, another opens.

But often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that God has opened.

You see, what God was doing was He was orchestrating his ends through the bad choices of the brothers.

And here's what this means for you, maybe for me.

And that is the worst thing in your Life, the most painful things, the things even other people have done that have been painful.

They're not outside of God's hand.

And if you can look above the circumstances and believe that, then what you're able to do is you're able to say, even when I'm in this place, that's painful, that's hard, God has not abandoned me here.

God's not done.

For Joseph, he was put in this place so that he would actually rise to power in Egypt and become the one who would say, through another dream, you know what?

I saw that there will be seven years of abundance and then seven lean years, and I'm going to take all of the resources for these abundant years, and I'm going to use them to provide in the lean years.

And his brothers and his father all benefited because they needed food too, and they came.

And so what happened was God used the very act of malicious hatred from his brothers to bring about their salvation.

God used what was most painful in a powerful way in Joseph's life.

And you may say, well, that's nice in a Bible story.

You know, that's a good thing, but but where I'm living, I don't see it.

But here's what I think is most helpful, and that is to recognize that Joseph, in this instance, isn't just a story, but he's really a prototype of Jesus Christ.

Because Joseph suffered in order to deliver his brothers to bring salvation to them.

Jesus suffered to bring salvation to you and me.

And what this ultimately means is that you can say, even if I'm in a place today that is devastating, that's full of pain, I can say, because of Jesus' death and resurrection, because he went to the cross, I can say, one day I will have ultimate restoration because of what Jesus has done.

You know, I asked you at the beginning what has been most painful in your life?

What if you were able to reframe that and say, I don't know how yet, but God is orchestrating something in this that is for my good.

But what if you were able to say, God is at work?

Will you trust God's hand?

Where maybe all you've seen is pain.

And if it's hard for you to do that, the place to look is not to your own resources, not be like Joseph, it's to Jesus, it's to the cross.

It's to saying what God did through Jesus Christ is evidence of his heart for me, for you.

And therefore I can say, whatever hardship exists, it's not the end of the story.

And if we can find that, that's our other way to address pain in our lives.

Let's pray together.

God, I ask in this moment for each of us that we could bring what is most painful to you.

I ask that you would meet us in our pain.

And you would lift us in our pain.

So that we would be able to see above the circumstances.

God, I assume that today there are some of us who are gathered who are saying, I don't even know if there is a God, if God is good, if Jesus is the answer.

I pray, even in this moment, that there would at least be a hope that it's true and a willingness to investigate that.

God, maybe for some, even in this moment, just to say, I can see how what Joseph did is a precursor to what Jesus Christ has done for me.

And that there would be just an acknowledgement of our need and a step to say, I'm gonna trust an eternal God with my life rather than my own ability to navigate it.

And God, we can do that by just acknowledging our sin, trusting Jesus, and taking a step toward you in faith.

And God, we pray this today in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Be blessed as you go this week.