OPENING
SENTENCE: I had an uncle who started to have a pain in his neck that caused him to lean his head to the left side and constantly wince in pain.
INTRODUCTION: Doctors could not diagnosis the problem so he lived with the pain for years. In time his neck began to permanently lean to the side. Our family moved away but about six years later I returned and saw my uncle whose head was permanently fixed sideways from the pain. He had been diagnosed with a nerve disorder but none of his treatments helped.
After about 25 years later he went to a dentist to remove a bad tooth and was immediately released from all the pain. He suffered all those years unnecessarily due to a failed diagnosis and treatment.
TRANSITION
SENTENCE: A wrong diagnosis can be costly and dangerous yet they are not all that uncommon- I am sure doctors struggle with this concern daily.
TRANSITION: I believe that every day we all witness a disastrous, dangerous misdiagnosis of mass proportions. Yet, we continue full bore on the same path that got us into the mess which is the unraveling of marriage and the family.
The diagnosis in our culture is that man is basically good but his self-esteem has been damage through negative influences. Through proper education and enhancing one’s self-esteem we can address what ails us. To do that we must affirm each person’s individuality - no matter how they are live or what they believe. We must teach them do be their own person, to love themselves and, to do whatever they need to do make them happy. Don’t any outside authority dictate for you how you should live because only you know what is best for you.
The problem with this diagnosis is that it is flat out wrong. Man is not basically good and people who have perfectly good self-esteem are just as inclined to do evil things- I doubt Hitler or Stalin lacked self-esteem. You cannot simply educate people out of evil- it is a spiritual issue. We are self-obsessed individuals who deny the truth about who we really and are vying to pursue our own happiness even if it comes at a cost to others.
SAY WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO SAY: This morning I want to propose a different diagnosis and solution to the problem by asking, “How does our sinful self-obsession impact our marriages?” We will look at three responses that reveal that our self-obsession causes us to hide the truth about ourselves and blame others for our flaws. This self-obsession becomes a curse that impacts our marriages in painful, destructive ways.
THEME: We cannot fix relationships until we first realize we are broken people that God wants to restore.
How does our sinful self-obsession impact our marriages?
I. It causes us to try to hide the truth about ourselves. (9-11)
9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” 10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
A. We are flawed self-centered people damaged by sin.
The problem in each of us is that we question God’s good intention for our lives and pursue our own path in defiance of His. It is grounded on the belief that we know what is best for us and that we can live and act independently of Him. The constant mantra, “I am the master of my fate” that has been indoctrinated into our culture is an echo of Eve’s deception that turn her against God. If we are our own God, then others are no longer safe to us because they are out for their self-interests- nor are they focused on to enhancing the “one flesh” union of marriage.
When we face the truth we know we are flawed and vulnerable creatures. Yet we do not want people to see our true self’s because it is not something pretty. So, like Adam, we try to hide who we really are. We hide in three major areas.
1. Fears: David Burns identifies seven silent assumptions that produce anxiety.
• Love: Some feel they will be alone and miserable if they have no one to love them. They obsess over trying to get or earn love.
• Approval: Some feel that if someone criticizes then they have no value or worth. They obsess over getting everyone’s approval.
• Omnipotence: Some feel they are responsible for everything that goes on around them. They obsess over trying to control everyone around them to absolve their fear.
• Perfectionism: Some feel that if they do not do everything perfect they will burn in the flames of hell. They obsess over reaching an unobtainable standard of perfection.
• Achievement: Some feel that if they are not superior at something value highly then they are failures. They obsess over being the best.
• Entitlement: Some feel that their wants be met by others because they deserve it. They obsess and get angry when they do not get the respect they feel they deserve.
• Autonomy: Some people feel that their fulfillment and well-being comes from outside themselves. They obsess over what is happening outside their control.
2. Flaws: We try to hide our flaws from others- and even ourselves. Here are a few examples.
• Sexual- Every man struggles with powerful sexual drives and are afraid that if people knew what really went on within themselves they would be rejected and shunned. The male sex drive is something women will never understand. It can be a blessing or a curse. It is lie a monkey on every man’s back that he has to learn control.
• Beauty- They value beauty and are always comparing themselves to others- always coming up short. They need constant affirmation from others.
• Intelligence- Some try to act far smarter than they really are so they hide the fact they don’t really know something so as not to appear as stupid.
3. Failures: We do not want people to know we have failed, sometimes miserably. So, we hide it in fear of rejection and lowered respect from others.
• Sexual- When we violate a boundary from ourselves or others.
• Substance Additions- We hide or deny our addiction to something.
• Unachieved expectations- We hide when we have failed at reaching a major goal.
B. We still think we should be treated as though we are perfect.
Like Adam we want people to see us as though we are good and perfect- like God. But we are not perfect so we hide- we don’t want people to see our true self. We feel naked and vulnerable for the fear they will see us as we really are- and based the judge mentalism of some we have legitimate cause for that fear.
C. When our imperfections are exposed we try to evade responsibility.
The problem with any one of these three things that we try to hide is that they always bleed out in some way. They bleed out in anger, they bleed out in avoidance, they bleed out in compulsive disorders, they bleed out in control tendencies, etc. People often see right through the things we think we are hiding and when they expose it instead of admitting the truth- we evade our responsibility. God asked Adam, a simple question, “Where are you.” God asked that question not because he didn’t know the answer but because He wanted to confront Adam with the truth.
ILLUSTRATE: God is not deceived by our attempts to hide. The irony here is that there is a powerful freeing experience when we face the truth about ourselves. For the documentary "The Mask You Live In", a scene shows a U.S. school teacher giving a group of high school boys a circular piece of paper. On one side they write what their image is, and on the other what they are feeling. Then they scrunch up the paper and throw it to another kid. Here's how researcher Dr. Philip Zimbardo summarized the boys' messages: "What they said was all the same. On the outside it said: 'Tough. Fearless. Kick your rear.' And on the inside: 'Lonely. Sad. Got no friends.' Each boy was stunned that the others felt the same way." (David Zahl, "Feministic Fallout," Mbird blog (5-26-15)
This certainly applies to boys and men, but in a sense it applies to all of us as we try to project an outward "I have it together" look while we struggle inwardly with insecurities. We need safe place to be real about our inner world—our fears and insecurities. Our spouse should be that place.
APPLY: It starts with confession. As I John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
THEME: We cannot fix relationships until we first realize we are broken people that God wants to restore through our repentance.
How does our sinful self-obsession impact our marriages?
II. It causes us to blame others for our imperfections. (12-13)
12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
A. When exposed we evade responsibility and blame others for our wrongs. God asked Adam a very simple question, “Did you eat of the tree I told you not to eat. The right, clear and straightforward answer is, “Yes”. Yet, Adam did what we all tend to do when we our attempts to hide failed. Instead of accepting responsibility and facing the truth he blamed both God and Eve. He blamed God by saying, “the woman YOU gave me”. He blamed Eve by saying she gave him the fruit. Both are true but they do not answer the question. Until, we face up to the truth and deal with our culpability we cannot restore our broken relationships. In regard to Adam, we learn in I Timothy 2:14 that he bears the greater responsibility because he knew what he was doing. It says, “And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.”
B. When blamed others do not want to admit their imperfections. Notice God redirects his questioning to Eve and says, “What is this you have done?” Now remember, earlier in Genesis we learn that the woman’s role was to be a helper to the man. Certainly her act was not no help to Adam but she also usurped her role. She too has double blame and like Adam she evades responsibility and redirects blame.
C. When blamed others look for someone else to blame. That is what self-centeredness does. We want to appear as righteousness. Yet, we are not- so we blame. In this simple exchange we see why marriages are in trouble. Our culture feeds this self-centered mantra so we should not be surprised that North America faces historically unprecedented attacks against marriage and the toll of such attacks is rising daily.
ILLUSTRATE: In their book Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson describe how a fixation on our own righteousness can choke the life out of love. They write: “The vast majority of couples who drift apart do so slowly, over time, in a snowballing pattern of blame and self-justification. Each partner focuses on what the other one is doing wrong, while justifying his or her own preferences, attitudes, and ways of doing things. … From our standpoint, therefore, misunderstandings, conflicts, personality differences, and even angry quarrels are not the assassins of love; self-justification is. (Quoted in David Zahl, "500 Years After Luther, We Still Feel the Pressure to Be Justified," Christianity Today (12-30-16)
APPLY: In light of our self-centeredness this makes sense. As author Denis de Rougemont said, “Why should neurotic, selfish, immature people suddenly become angels when they fall in love . . . ?” That is why a good marriage is more painfully hard to achieve than athletic or artistic prowess. Raw, natural talent does not enable you to play baseball as a pro or write great literature without enduring discipline and enormous work. Why would it be easy to live lovingly and well with another human being in light of what is profoundly wrong within our human nature? (Keller, Timothy. The Meaning of Marriage)
THEME: We cannot fix relationships until we first realize we are broken people that God wants to restore through our repentance.
How does our sinful self-obsession impact our marriages?
III. It causes the proper God given roles in life to be damaged. (14-19)
16 To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
A. For the man: His curse is that he will face frustration in his work. In 2:15 we learn, “the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” Man was created for work but with the curse his work is frustrated with weeds. When you put this together with the curse for Even you can already see an unhealthy scenario forming. The man comes home from a very frustrating day at work. He returns home irritated and tired and he simply wants to crash to go into mindless fog to avoid thinking about his fears and frustration. His frustration is expressed to the woman who wants his attention and support- so she lets her own dissatisfaction known.
B. For the Woman: Her role as man’s compliment is impaired.
1. She will face pain in childbearing. It appears that at creation childbearing was painless. The curse changed that. But is the next two things that most impact marriage and lay the groundwork for the battle of the sexes.
2. The man she is called to compliment becomes insensitive and controlling.
The word “rule” communicates is a rare Hebrew word that carries the idea of insensitive control. Man was created by God to be a loving attentive leader in the marriage but his self-obsession takes his leadership to an ugly place. It is for this reason our culture has an issue with male leadership concept promoting instead equality and gender-neutral roles.
In his book, “Fatherless America”, David Blankenhorn speaks to this trend by defining the Old Father vs. the New Father. If you replace the word “father” with “husband” you will see how this applies. He says, “The Old Father wields power. He controls. He decides. He tells other people what to do. He has fangs. This aspect of his character generates suspicion and resentment… This is the heart of the matter. Many contemporary critics do not view authority – or even more accurately domination- as synonymous with male identify itself.”
Our culture has proposed a solution. They see our gender polarity as male and female as part of the problem so they propose we remove the concept of gender roles all together. To do so demands that we restate the words of a song in “My Fair Lady” from “Why can’t a woman be more like a man” to “Why can’t a man be more like a woman.” So they propose “A New Father” who gives up his authority role and becomes more nurturing and androgynous.
The problem with the New Father model is that it denies our biology. Male testosterone makes men more aggressive. But, it is also an insult to patriarchy which has always taught that a father’s role is to provide, protect and lovingly lead his family. The problem is not male leadership and masculinity; the problem is that self-centeredness has distorted those qualities. The solution is not to remove gender distinctions but to follow the model of Jesus who sacrificed himself for his wife- the church.
3. She will become a nag trying to fix her broken husband. The word “desire” used in phrase, “your desire will be for your husband” is a rare word and is used in Genesis 4:7 which states, “But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” We see here the imagery of a lion ready to pounce on its desired prey to control and consume it. That is the woman’s curse- she wants her husband’s love, attention and affirmation but his insensitive control frustrates her moving her try to fix and control him to get what she wants.
C. The only solution is to submit to God and submit to each other like Christ for us. This why Paul uses the covenant the church has with Jesus like that of the marriage covenant.
ILLUSTRATE: Philippians 2:1-12 “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. 5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.”
APPLY: Like Jesus, we do not wait for the other person to fix himself before we act humbly and sacrificially to restore the relationship.
SAY WHAT YOU HAVE SAID: This morning we asked, “How does our sinful self-obsession impact our marriages?” We saw that it causes us to hide the truth about ourselves and to blame others for our problem. This self-obsession becomes a curse that impacts our marriages in painful, destructive ways.
TIE INTO OPENING SENTENCE: Like my uncle who suffered with debilitating pain for 25 years due to a wrong diagnosis I believe our marriages and relationships suffer because we have accepted the wrong diagnosis. Our marriages are a major crisis because of it.
APPY TO SPECIFIC AUDIENCE:
1. You need to confront your own self-centeredness- don’t wait for the other person to act first.
2. Accept responsibility for your sin- stop pretending to be the victim and passing blame to others.
3. Understand that the painful vulnerability that healing a damaged relationship begins with self-sacrifice like that of Jesus. It is a sacrifice that may require a very high cost. But, like Jesus, it is in that sacrifice that we have hope for our greatest fulfillment.
HAYMAKER: What kind of price are football players willing to pay for NFL money, fame and glory? Esquire magazine reported that during the 2011 NFL season, the roughly 2,000 active players suffered at least 4,500 injuries. That comes out to an injury rate of 225 percent. The long list of injuries includes: "… concussions, torn ACLs, ruptured Achilles tendons, high ankle sprains, hyperextended elbows, broken metatarsals, turf toes, stretched or compressed spines, pulled hamstrings, and torn muscles, along with assorted strains, contusions, and herniations."
A current NFL player who wants to remain anonymous documents his experiences of pain for his children to understand when they're older. Here's a typical entry: “My left knee has been aching this entire week. I don't know why. I didn't get hit directly on it in the last game …. When I start moving around, the muscles and tendons in my leg feel so stressed, sometimes I feel they might rupture. My lower back is so sore, painful and stiff; my right shoulder has lost some mobility for some reason. My right ankle is constantly being twisted; my left feels very weak …. I don't sleep much, I feel super stressed, and on game day I take tons of drugs …
Right from player's early teens the accepted dogma is that injuries should never stop you from "going to war" …. The "theater of pain" is all pervasive for today's player. Green Bay Packer's center Jeff Saturday says,
They see guys writhing in pain. They see guys crying, and they hear guys screaming. They see guys knocked out, guys go limp as a suit sliding from a hanger, guys stay horribly still, guys strapped to the board—and that's what every player fears. The board. Getting strapped to the board.
This story shows a profound dedication to sacrifice comfort in order to achieve a goal. If a man can make that kind of sacrifice for football why can’t he do the same for his wife who is far more important. What cost are we willing to pay for your marriage? (Tom Junod, "Theater of Pain", Esquire, February 2013; submitted by Jerry De Luca, Montreal West, Quebec, Canada)
