Foundations of Truth

Guest (Male): You're listening to Foundations of Truth, the radio and podcast ministry of Firm Foundations. Our mission is to help you build your life on the unshakable foundation of God's word. Rooted in scripture, anchored in the grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Every family wants peace, but many homes today are filled with tension, distance, even silence. Genesis chapter three gives us the answer. It shows us how sin entered the world, but more importantly, how it affected our relationships. Today's message from Dr. Timothy Mann is The Great Coverup.

Dr. Timothy Mann: Turn in your Bibles this morning to Genesis chapter three. Genesis chapter three is where we are in this series that we're calling Home Security: God's Protection Plan for the Family. Today we are going to be reading verse one and we'll go all the way down through verse 21.

I'm excited about this series. It's a challenging series in so many ways. I also want to convince you that you can have a good family situation and to bring comfort to you if you're struggling. God has love for you, has a plan for you, and can work His work in your life as you yield to Him.

Before we get to God's word, I want to share this with you. When I was a little boy, my granny had a vinyl couch. I loved my granny and my granny loved me. She would watch me at her house when my mom had to work. Both my mom and dad started back to work after I went to kindergarten. In the summertime, my granny would keep me while my parents were at work. She had this vinyl couch and she had a little pocket knife that she left laying around.

You probably know where this is going. I decided that pocket knife would be fun to play with, and I decided to try it out on her couch. Yes, I did. That little knife cut so nicely. At some point, I concluded that this was a very bad idea. Now my granny also crocheted. I don't know if you know what that is. It's kind of like knitting, but it's using yarn. She would crochet various things, like these blankets, and she had one on the back of that couch.

It occurred to me that I could use that blanket and just fold it up and put it over my knife experiment and no one would notice. I could just cover it up. I could act like nothing ever happened and everything would be fine. As you might guess, everything did not turn out fine. As we said back in the mountains of Western North Carolina, I got a whopping over that one. I don't really know what happened to the couch after that, but anyway.

The Bible says in Genesis chapter three, beginning in verse one: "Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, 'Has God indeed said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?' And the woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. But of the fruit which is of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.'"

By the way, that is not true. He didn't say you can't touch it. She's adding to God's words here. She added to it. "And then the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.' So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her and he ate."

"And then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, 'Where are you?' And so he said, 'I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.'"

"And He said, 'Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?' And then the man said, 'The woman whom You gave to be with me, she ate of the tree and I ate.' And the Lord God said to the woman, 'What is this you have done?' The woman said, 'The serpent deceived me and I ate.' And the Lord God said to the serpent, 'Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all the cattle, more than every beast of the field. On your belly you shall go, you shall eat dust all the days of your life.'"

"And I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. And He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise His heel." By the way, let me just point this out. This is the gospel before the gospel right here in this verse. This is prefigured Calvary. This is the first prophecy here we see of the coming Messiah and the salvation that He's going to provide. We see that here in Genesis 3:15.

"To the woman, verse 16, He said, 'I will greatly multiply your sorrow in your conception. In pain you shall bring forth your children. And your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.' And then to Adam he said, 'Because you have heeded the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you saying, You shall not eat of it, cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you shall return.'"

Everything was going along absolutely great. They were in perfect harmony with each other. They were at peace with themselves, with God, and with each other. Then something happened. Sin entered the world and it changed the whole thing permanently. In Genesis chapter three, they disobeyed God. Sin entered the picture and their marriage and their life was never the same again.

One of the things that happened was that it brought fear into their relationship. It brought fear into the experience of life. This message is going to be applicable to you even if you're not married because you're in a relationship with someone. You have all kinds of relationships, whether it is a friend, family, brother, sister, or mother. This is talking about Home Security: God's Protection Plan for the Family.

In verse seven, it says, "Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings." This was the original coverup. This is the great coverup. It happened with Adam and Eve thousands of years ago. Intimacy and honesty were destroyed. We've been doing this ever since.

This is not just a physical coverup, putting on clothes, but it is also an emotional and relational coverup. It's a spiritual coverup. They were hiding because of their fears. These leaves represent an attempt to hide from God, from themselves, and from each other. In verse 10, Adam said, "I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself."

I want to submit to you that fear is the basis of all coverups, every single one of them, in relationships and in all of life. The root of most of our relationship difficulties, even problems that happen in the church, is fear. It's probably because of the fall of sin, but it's fear. I want to look for the next few minutes, based on the life of Adam and Eve, three ways specifically that fear wrecks relationships and destroys marriages.

We're talking about how to protect your family God's way. This is a very significant way that we can learn how to do that. Fear affects everything. It affects our thoughts, our relationships, our feelings, and our emotions. It even affects our freedom.

Guest (Male): Don't go anywhere. Coming up next, we're going to look at three specific ways fear entered the human story and how it still destroys relationships today. From Adam and Eve's response, we'll see how fear distorts the way we think, damages the way we relate to others, and even robs us of the freedom God intended for us. If you've ever seen fear create distance in a marriage, maybe your marriage or someone else's, or tension in a family, the next part is for you.

Dr. Timothy Mann: Greetings, this is Dr. Timothy Mann. Friends, we're able to bring you this program each week because of the generosity of listeners just like you. But we can't do it alone. If God is using this ministry in your life, now would be a great time to step in and help sustain it. Every gift, large or small, makes a real difference. Go to firm-foundations.org and partner with us today. We'd be deeply grateful.

Guest (Male): Today's message is The Great Coverup from Genesis chapter three. Let's return now to Dr. Timothy Mann.

Dr. Timothy Mann: I want to look for the next few minutes, based on the life of Adam and Eve, three ways specifically that fear wrecks relationships and destroys marriages. We're talking about how to protect your family God's way. Fear affects everything. It affects our thoughts, our relationships, our feelings, and our freedom.

What do we fear? First of all, number one, we fear our faults. When we fear our faults, we become defensive. Everybody makes mistakes. We all blow it, we all have problems, and we all sin. We all fail in life. The problem is we just don't like to admit it. We become defensive.

How do you know? When your spouse says to you, "That's kind of a dumb idea," you say, "It was not." That's what happens. Have you ever noticed during presidential debates, the candidates would rather defend a ridiculous idea instead of just saying, "I just wasn't thinking." They'll spend 20 minutes defending something while everybody else is thinking, "He's got himself into a mess this time."

We're just afraid to admit our faults and we become defensive. We're afraid that if we admit a weakness to our spouse or to a friend, they might reject us. They might ridicule us. They might laugh at us or, even worse, use it against you and exploit you.

Notice what Adam did when he was confronted with his own fault. He took it like a man and blamed his wife. Verse 11 says, "Who told you you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree which I commanded you that you should not eat?" God knew, but He was trying to bring Adam to a point of admitting his fault.

The first words out of his mouth, instead of saying, "Yeah, I did it," were, "The woman whom You gave me." Notice the defensiveness in his voice. He's not the only one. He's not only blaming his wife, he's also blaming God. "God, You gave me this woman. I didn't ask for this woman."

He's blaming his wife and he's also blaming God. Eve blames the serpent. Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent, and Adam blames God. This is a typical reaction. We become defensive, pass the buck, and blame others. We don't like to admit our own faults. We start saying things like, "It's not my fault, that's your problem," or, "You're the problem."

Understand the only way you're going to make progress in a relationship or in your marriage is when you face your faults head-on. Fear not only causes problems, it perpetuates them. We think, "I'm too scared to admit the problem. I'm too afraid to talk about it or to ask for help. I'll just pretend it doesn't exist and it'll just go away."

The pain and the problem just gets bigger and bigger. We never change our thoughts about our faults until the pain is greater than the fear. That's the problem. We don't change when we see the light; we only change when we feel the heat. We don't change our thoughts until the pain is bigger and worse than the fear.

Then we get desperate and say, "I can't take it anymore. I'll change. I'll do whatever it takes." Fear is such a bad motivator, and we never change until the fear is exceeded by the pain and we finally say, "I don't care what I'm afraid of, I'm going to change." When we fear our faults, we become defensive. Adam feared his faults. That's the first one.

Number two, when we fear our feelings, we become distant. Men particularly withdraw when confronted with emotion. Ladies, I just have to tell you, we just don't like to handle it. Cut them some slack. We don't like emotional scenes too well.

That guy who is cool and detached and macho is really just a big chicken. We don't like to see women cry. Most men cannot stand to be in an emotionally upset scene. So what happens? He becomes distant. Patty and I are different when it comes to personality. My wife is expressive and emotional. I used to be very reserved.

Thirty-three years of marriage has changed me. I've learned more how to express myself. But it's still my nature to be reserved. Patty would get bothered about something and express emotions. I would say to myself, "I can't handle this emotion," and I would just disconnect. She could be crying and saying how she felt while I would be in neutral. I would be in a catatonic state with a glaze over my eyes. Lights are on, but nobody's home.

When we fear our feelings, we disconnect. We become distant and back off. One of the number one problems I've heard over the years in marriage counseling is, "My husband never talks to me. I don't know how he feels." Ma'am, that's because he's afraid of how he feels. It terrifies him.

Sometimes women say, "Before marriage, we talked all night and now he won't say boo. Before marriage, he was poetic and now all he does is grunt." One lady said the only time her husband talks to her is when he wants food, the television remote, or to hanky panky.

There are really three levels of communication. There's the shallowest level where you talk about trivia, like the weather, events, or gossip. The next level of communication is when you talk about ideas, opinions, or expectations. This is where conflict can come in, but it's a good level where you begin to share ideas. The deepest level you must have in order to build a relationship is where you share how you feel.

I have a hard time with that sometimes. I want to fix it. Whatever it is, I just want to fix it. My wife has told me in the past, "When I tell you something, you don't have to tell me how to fix it. I'm not wanting you to solve a problem." That doesn't make a lick of sense to me. Guys, you know what I'm talking about. She says, "I just want to tell you how I feel. I don't want a response."

That's what you ought to do. Why are we so thick-headed sometimes? We're talking about gut-level feelings where you share how you feel about something. John Powell wrote a book, "Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am?" The answer is, I'm afraid to tell you who I am because who I am is all I've got. If you don't like who I am, then I'm done.

We have two selves. We have the public self that we show to everybody that says, "I'm cool, I've got it all together." Then we have our private self that has fears, apprehensions, doubts, and hang-ups. There are really three kinds of feelings that frighten us. There are many more, but there are at least three main ones that scare people in marriage in particular.

They not only scare people in relationships, they can also be a problem in the church. The first kind of feeling we're afraid of is hurt feelings. Hurt feelings frighten us. We don't like to admit that we're vulnerable. We don't like to admit it when something's wrong.

We play a game that I call "is something wrong?" You know how it goes. "Is something wrong?" "No, I'm okay." "I can tell something's wrong." "No, everything's fine." You know they're lying. We don't like to admit it when we're hurt. This goes for both men and women, but especially men. Instead of saying "you've hurt me," what do we do? We get angry.

You never admit pain. I grew up in a culture where we were taught as men that you never express hurt. You be macho and you never let anything get to you. Because of that, a lot of men will never allow their wives to really get close to them emotionally. There's a fear of intimacy there. Hiding a hurt always intensifies it and makes it worse. It becomes this big bugaboo in the closet.

When we're afraid of our feelings, we back off and become distant. We don't want anyone else to become close because we'll get our feelings hurt again. Another kind of feeling that frightens us is negative feelings. Have you ever noticed that we have a tendency to deny when we're angry? "I am not angry! I am not raising my voice!"

We just don't like to admit when we're upset. Every marriage has good days and bad days, ups and downs. Some days you feel very loving, and some days you just want to wring their neck. The fact is sometimes your spouse is a pain in the ankle. It's just true. They're an irritation.

Sometimes you just want to say, "I don't like you today." That doesn't mean that I don't love you or that our marriage is falling apart. It means you just ticked me off right now. That is so normal. But negative feelings frighten us.

Guest (Male): If you've been encouraged by today's message or if God is using this program in your life, we'd love for you to partner with us. You can give a gift today at firm-foundations.org. We are listener-supported and we thank you for helping us continue to share the truth of God's word. Join us next time as we'll continue this message on The Great Coverup from the series Home Security: God's Protection Plan for the Family on Foundations of Truth with Dr. Timothy Mann.