What If Your Defensiveness Is Really Fear?

Fear doesn’t usually announce itself as fear. It shows up as defensiveness, silence, blame, and that instinct to “just cover it up” and hope it goes away. We go to Genesis chapter 3 with Dr. Timothy Mann and watch the first great cover-up unfold: Adam and Eve reach for fig leaves, hide from God, and immediately feel the relational fallout of sin, shame, and separation. If you’ve ever felt tension in your home, distance in your marriage, or a hard wall go up in a friendship, this message puts words to what’s happening underneath.

We talk through why fear becomes the engine behind so many relationship problems and how it distorts the way we think and relate. Dr. Mann connects the dots from Eden to today, showing how fear of our faults makes us defensive, quick to pass the buck, and slow to admit wrong. Then we dig into fear of feelings, the kind that makes people withdraw when emotion rises, leaving spouses and families stuck with surface-level communication instead of real emotional intimacy.

There’s also hope threaded right into the text. Genesis 3:15 points forward to the gospel of Jesus Christ, reminding us that God doesn’t leave people trapped in shame. Come for the biblical insight, stay for the practical help on confession, honest conversation, and rebuilding trust. If Foundations of Truth encourages you, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review to help more families find solid ground.

Transcript

Foundations Of Truth And Family Peace

SPEAKER_00 0:00

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. And why? 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 cover-up.

A Childhood Lesson In Hiding

Genesis 3 Read Aloud

Fig Leaves Fear And The Fall

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Well, turning your Bibles this morning to Genesis chapter 3. Genesis chapter 3. It's where we are in this series that we're calling Home Security, God's Protection Plan for the Family. Today we're in Genesis chapter 3. We're going to be reading verse 1 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 also to bring comfort to you. If you're not, if you're struggling, God has love for you and 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. And in the summertime, my granny would keep me while my mom was at work and my dad was 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. Well, I decided that pocket knife would be fun to play with, and I decided to try it out on her couch. Yeah, I did. That knife, that little knife cut so nicely. At some point, I concluded that this was a very bad idea. Now, my granny, she also crocheted. I don't know if you know what that is. It's kind of like knitting, but it's using yarn, and she would crochet various things, and she would crochet these blankets, and she had one on the back of that couch. It occurred to me, 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 just cover it up, 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 whooping over that one. And I don't really know what happened to the couch after that. I can't remember. But anyway, the Bible says, Genesis chapter 3, beginning in verse 1. 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 trees, the fruit of the trees of the garden. But of the fruit which is in 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, which is which, by the way, 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 woman, the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die. Verse 5, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be open, 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. And 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 sowed 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 woman, uh 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 throw this in here and point this out. This is the gospel before the gospel, right here in this verse. This is prefigured Calvary right here. This is to say, 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. And the woman, verse 16, to the woman, he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and 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. Everything was fine. They were in perfect harmony with each other. They were at peace with themselves, they were at peace with God, they were at peace with each other, and then something happened. What happened? What happened? Well, sin entered the world, and it changed the whole thing permanently. In Genesis chapter 3, they disobeyed God. Sin entered the picture, and their marriage and their life was never the same again. Never the same again. And one of the things that happened was that it brought fear into their relationship. It brought fear into their life, into the experience of life. Fear. Now, this message is going to be applicable to you, even if you're not married. It's going to be very applicable because you're in a relationship with someone. You have all kinds of relationships, even if you're not married. It's going to be a friend or family or brother or sister or mother or somebody, someone you've got a relationship with. But also, particularly in marriage, this is talking about home security, God's protection plan for the family. Now, in verse 7, what did it say in verse 7? It says, Then the eyes of both of them were open, and they knew they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. This was the original cover-up. This is the great cover-up. That's what this message is called this morning, the great cover-up. And it happened with Adam and Eve thousands and thousands of years ago. Intimacy and honesty were destroyed. It was gone. And we've been doing this ever since. Now, this is not just a physical cover-up, putting on clothes, some type of covering, but this is also an emotional, relational cover-up. It's a spiritual cover-up. They were hiding because of their fears. Why did they do that? See, these leaves represent an attempt to hide from God. It's an attempt to hide from themselves. It's an attempt to hide from each other. That's what these leaves represent. Verse 10, here it is. Adam said, I heard your voice in the garden talking to God, and I what? I was afraid. Because I was naked and I hid myself. I want to submit to you that fear is the basis of all cover-ups. Every single one of them. In relationships and in all of life. The root of most, if not all, of our relationship difficulties, even difficulties in the church, the problems that happen in the church, the root of all of that is fear. Fear. Now it's probably because of the fall of sin, obviously, but it's fear. And I want to look at for the next few minutes, based on the life of Adam and Eve, three ways. Specifically, that fear wrecks relationships, that fear destroys marriages, that fear destroys, absolutely wrecks marriages. So we're talking about how to protect your family God's way. Well, this is a very significant way that we can learn how to do that. See, let me tell you, fear affects everything. It affects our thoughts, it affects our relationships, it affects our feelings, our emotions, it even affects our freedom.

Partner With Firm Foundations

SPEAKER_00 10:25

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.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

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.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Today's message is the great cover-up from Genesis chapter 3. Let's return now to Dr. Timothy Mann.

Fear Of Faults Makes Us Defensive

Fear Of Feelings Makes Us Distant

Learning To Share Feelings

Hurt And Anger We Refuse Admit

SPEAKER_01 11:24

And I want to look at for the next few minutes, based on the life of Adam and Eve, three ways. Specifically, that fear wrecks relationships, that fear destroys marriages, that fear destroys, absolutely wrecks marriages. So we're talking about how to protect your family God's way. Well, this is a very significant way that we can learn how to do that. See, let me tell you, fear affects everything. It affects our thoughts, it affects our relationships, it affects our our feelings, our emotions, it even affects our freedom. So what do we fear? Let's discuss this a little bit more in detail. First of all, number one, we fear our faults. And when we fear our faults, we become defensive. When we fear our faults, we become defensive. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody blows it. We all have problems. We all sin. Every person, we all sin. We all fail in life. The problem is we just don't like to admit it. We become defensive. You say, how do you know? Well, when your wife or a husband says to you, that's kind of a dumb idea, you say, it was not. That's what happens. Have you ever paid attention? Have you ever noticed during the like the presidential debates, the candidates would rather defend a ridiculous idea instead of just saying, hey, I wasn't, I just wasn't thinking. They'll spend 20 minutes, they'll defend something. Everybody else around them is thinking, boy, he's got himself into a mess this time. But they'll defend it. We're just afraid to admit our faults and we become defensive. We're afraid to admit, we're afraid that if we admit that we have a weakness to our spouse or to a friend or whoever it might be, we're afraid that if we admit we have a weakness, that they might reject us. They might ridicule us. They might laugh at us, or even worse, they might use it against you and exploit you. So we're afraid to do that. Notice what Adam did. Notice Adam when he was confronted with his own fault. Notice what Adam did. He took it like a man and blamed his wife. 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? Now do you think God didn't know? Of course he knew. He's trying to bring Adam to a point of admitting his fault, of admitting his sin. And the first words out of his mouth, instead of saying, Yeah, I did it, the first words out of his mouth was what? The woman whom you gave me. The woman whom you gave me. Notice the defensiveness in his voice? You notice that? And he's not the only one. He's not only blaming his wife. Who else is he blaming? He's blaming God. God, you gave me this woman. I didn't ask for this woman. You gave me this woman. You gave her to me. So he's not only blaming his wife, he's also blaming God. And what happens? Well, Eve blames the serpent. Adam blames Eve. Eve blames the serpent. Adam blames God. This is a typical reaction. We become defensive. We pass the buck. We blame others. We don't like to admit our own faults. So what do we do? We start saying things like, It's not my fault, that's your problem. It's not my problem, that's you're the problem. I want you to understand the only way you're going to make progress in a relationship, the only way you're going to make progress in your marriage is when you face your faults head on. You face them head on. It's the only way you're going to make progress. Because fear not only causes problems, it continues problems. It perpetuates them. We think things like, well, I'm afraid, and so I'm too scared to admit the problem. I'm too afraid to talk about it. I'm too scared to ask for help. I'll just pretend that it doesn't exist and it'll just go away. And what happens then is the pain and the problem just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And we never change until. Listen, we never change our thoughts about our faults until the pain is greater than the fear. We never change until the pain is greater than the fear. And that's the problem. The situation is this. 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. And then we get desperate and we say, I can't take it anymore. I'll change. Now 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, Okay, I don't care what I'm afraid of, I'm going to change. And here's the deal when we fear our faults, we become defensive. Adam feared his faults. That's the first one. We fear our faults, we become defensive. And this next one's going to be helpful for those of us specifically who are married, but it's helpful in any relationship. Number two, when we fear our feelings, we become distant. When we fear our faults, we become defensive. But 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. So give them a break, okay? Give them a little bit of a break. Cut them some slack. We don't like emotional scenes too well. That guy who is that guy who is cool and detached and macho, he's really just a big chicken. That's all he is. We don't like to see women cry. We can't most men cannot stand to be in an emotionally upset scene. And so what happens? He becomes distant. Patty and I are different when it comes to personality and how we're made. My wife is expressive and emotional. I used to be very reserved. I still am sometimes. I was not a real emotional type person. But I'm going to tell you, 33 years of marriage has changed me. I've learned more to express myself. It has changed me. But it's still my nature to be reserved. Patty would get bothered about something and express emotions. I would say, not directly to her, I would say to myself, I can't handle this emotion, and I would just disconnect. She could be crying and verbally saying how she felt. Well, I would be in neutral. I would be in a catatonic state with a glaze over my eyes. You know what I'm talking about? It's going in in one ear and out the other. Lights are on, but nobody's home. When we fear our feelings, we disconnect. We become distant and we back off. One of the number one problems I've heard over the years as a pastor in marriage counseling is that my husband never talks to me. He never talks, he won't talk to me. I don't know how he feels. Ma'am, that's because he's afraid of how he feels. He's afraid of how he feels. It terrifies him. Sometimes women say, well, 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 my husband talks to me is when he wants food, the television remote, or the hanky panky. That's it. That's the only time he ever talks to me. You know, there's really three levels of communication. There's the shallowest level of communication, and where you talk about trivia. You know, you talk about the weather, events, other things, other people, gossip, whatever. The next level of communication is when you talk about ideas or opinions or expectations. This is where conflict can come in. And I think this is this is a good level where you begin to share ideas. But the deepest level, and the level of communication that you must have in order to build a relationship, in order to build a marriage, is that you must have this level of relationship, this level of communication where you share how you feel. I have a hard time with that sometimes. You know I am? 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. I'm not wanting you to solve the problem. Now that doesn't make a lick of sense to me. You know what I'm talking about, guys? That doesn't make sense to me. I want to something there's a problem, I want to try to fix it. You know what she says? She says, I just want to tell you how I feel. I don't want you to give me an answer telling me how to fix it. I don't want a response. I just want to tell you how I feel. And that's what you ought to do. Why are we so thick-headed sometimes? And we're talking about gut-level feelings. This is the way I feel about it. And you share that. A guy one time by the name of John Power, he wrote a book, Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am? Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am? That's an intriguing title to me. I'll tell you why. The answer is, I'm afraid to tell you who I am, because who I am is all I've got. And if you don't like who I am, this is all I've got, and then I'm done. It's over. We have two selves, don't we? You know that? 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, everything is just fine. And then we have our private selves that has fears and apprehensions and doubts and hang ups and is scared of feelings. There's 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 marriage and relationships, it can also be a problem. In the church. Two of them are specifically in the church. Three relate completely to marriage and relationships, but two of them boil over into the church. The first one is this. Here's the first kind of feeling we're afraid of. We're afraid of hurt feelings. Hurt feelings frighten us. Hurt feelings really bother 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. No, I'm okay. Are you sure? No, I'm okay. I can tell something's wrong. No, everything's fine. You know they're lying. You know that. We don't like to admit it when we're hurt. We can't handle hurt feelings. This goes for both men and women, but especially men. I'm speaking from a man's perspective. And instead of saying, You've hurt me, what do we do? We get angry. We stuff it sometimes, or we get angry. You never admit pain. I grew up in a culture where we were taught as men that you never, never, ever express hurt. You never admit pain. You never cry. No, you be you be macho and you never let anything get to you. And because of that, a lot of men will never allow their wives to really get close to them emotionally. It can be a problem in churches, too. There's a fear of intimacy there. The problem is hiding a hurt always intensifies it. It always makes it worse. And when you hide a hurt, it becomes this big bugaboo in the closet that you don't want anybody else to know about. Your feelings are hurt. And when we're afraid of our feelings, we back off and we become distant. We don't want then anybody else to become close to us because we'll get our feelings hurt again, and hurt feelings frighten us. Let me tell you another kind of feeling that frightens us. Negative feelings. Negative feelings frighten us. 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. You ever heard that in a marriage? I mean, you're having one of those intense moments of fellowship at home. I'm not raising my voice. We just don't like to admit when we're upset. Negative feelings frighten us. And the truth is, every marriage has good days and bad days. Every marriage has ups and downs. We go through cycles. Some days you feel very loving and amorous toward them. Some days you just want to wring their neck. I mean, the fact is, sometimes your spouse is a pain in the ankle. You know, it's just true. They're an irritation and they bother you, and so you maybe don't want to hang around them for a little while. Sometimes you just want to say, I don't like you today. That doesn't mean that I don't love you. It doesn't mean that our marriage is falling apart. It doesn't mean that I'm going to ask for a divorce. It means you just tick me off right now. That's all it means. And that is so normal. It's normal. But negative feelings frighten us.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

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. That's 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 Cover Up from the series Home Security God's Protection Plan for the Family. On Foundations of Truth with Dr. Timothy Mann.