In this episode, we explore the roots and complexities of deception, particularly within relationships. We unpack how deceit can subtly erode trust and destabilize the very foundation of human connection. The discussion highlights the emotional toll deception takes—shedding light on the confusion, hurt, and sense of betrayal that often follow in its wake.

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Welcome to a thought provoking episode of Relationship Realities.

Our hosts, Sam and Debbie Wood are thrilled to have you with us today.

Whether you're a single or married listener, get ready for a captivating journey where we explore the realities of relationships beyond the fairy tales.

Well, our topic today is something really big.

You say, what do you mean?

We're going to talk about deception and how it fractures relationships.

And I said really big.

And you might say, why?

Why is a the topic of deception so big?

We have a lot of people, especially spouses, but even people in other relationships like parent, child relationships or employer, employee relationship, they'll come to us.

And maybe the overall reason they're coming to us is because there's an addiction.

There may be immorality, there may be a, what they might consider a big sin problem.

But when we start delving into these relationships and helping these people know how to respond to the wrong that's done against them, there is a certain link between every single one of these, whether it's addiction or immorality or even financial problems, and that's deception.

And it is so confusing for the people that are being deceived because they don't know what to do, they don't know how to respond.

And it's just a really hurtful thing when you're already dealing with the hurt of betrayal.

And here on top of that, you have deception.

You know, one of the hard things and we think about deception is it breaks something called trust.

And trust is essential.

It's a foundation of every relationship.

In fact, often say trust is a bridge to every relationship.

And when you lie or you deceive someone, that trust is broken.

It is.

And I've had these ladies come to me and sob because of the hurt of the brokenness of the hurt of just not knowing again how to respond to this.

And the lying, it makes you feel like you don't know what path to take because you can't believe anything.

So trust is, it's really important in a relationship.

So we might ask a question, you know, where did deception come from?

And I think to answer that question, we have to go back to the garden and we think about again, the first relationship between Adam and Eve.

And you know, when I think about that, I think how beautiful, as we've said in previous episodes it was that they were living in a place called Eden, enclosed place of pleasure, communing with each other.

It describes, it kind of summarizes their relationship at the end of Genesis chapter two as they were both naked and not ashamed and when it says that that's an awesome relationship because it means they were both known and still loved and accepted.

Fully known.

They fully knew each other and still loved and accepted each other.

There was complete trust between them.

Right?

And I think this is the dream of everyone that gets married.

They feel like that's what their relationship is going to be.

It's going to be a relationship filled with trust.

Certainly the devil didn't like that.

So we see in Genesis chapter 3 in verse 1 that it says the serpent was more crafty.

Notice that word crafty.

What does that mean?

To me, that just reeks of deception.

Crafty.

He was more manipulative.

Another word I know in some translations is subtle.

He was deceptive, more subtle than any other beasts of the field.

So.

And in his deception, what he does is he goes to woman and he says, did God actually say, you know, so he's really questioning God, casting doubt on God and that you shouldn't eat of any tree.

And of course, the woman responds to the serpent and says, well, God said we could eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but he said you couldn't eat of the fruit that's in the middle of the garden.

That is, you can't touch it or eat of it.

And the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And so the certain then said, what?

What did he say in verse four?

He said, you will not surely die, you know.

So what has he done?

He's insinuated.

What?

Oh, he's insinuated you cannot trust God.

And that's another form of deception.

This insinuation.

It's not exactly true, but they're insinuating and making you believe something that isn't true.

Deception.

Yeah.

So he's casting doubt on God.

He's telling woman that who's living in the midst of a garden where she's communing.

Her and her husband are communing with God and their relationship is full of trust that they're naked and not ashamed.

They've got everything they could possibly want, that garden.

And he questions the goodness of God.

And that's what Satan does, has done ever since.

Is God really good?

And I know a lot of times we ask that question, you know, is God good?

And of course we know the answer.

God is good because the Bible tells us he is good.

But then he goes on in verse 5 and he says, well, God says if you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil.

God didn't Want you to be like he is.

So he's holding back from you.

Right.

And in a sense, you know, you will know evil at this point, but the difference between God knowing evil and us knowing evil is that we know it experientially and God knows it as a fact.

He doesn't actually participate in it himself.

Yeah.

And it's interesting if you go down in chapter three and we know the result of them eating, disobeying God, doing what God said not to do, which is what Satan was deceiving them to do, is disobey God.

They immediately did what?

They covered themselves up with fig leaves and they hid from God and cover up.

That's what we still do.

It's just like what you tell one lie, then you got to cover it up with another lie so you won't get caught.

And then you have to do another lie and it gets deeper and deeper and deeper.

So cover up is just piling up the deception.

So we might, we might say that the root of deception is fear and something called pride.

And the Bible says God hates pride.

Why would we say that fear and pride are related to deception?

Because it's part of the reason.

Why would you deceive?

Because you're afraid that someone might find out something about you and where you won't be admired as much as you want and that that's all linked to pride and fear.

You might fear how someone's going to react if they know the truth.

Are they going to get angry?

Are they going to do something destructive?

So there's, there's a drive of fear and pride behind all lying.

Yeah.

When you think about a husband, wife, relationship, a husband, a wife don't want, doesn't want to be honest with the other person sometimes because they have a fear they won't be loved the way they want to be loved and they're ashamed.

So you got shame there too.

So it's pride.

I want to look like I am somebody, not that I'm a liar.

So we see when this deception entered the relationship of man.

It's a horrible thing.

It fractures relationships like nothing else.

And listen, we all deal with deception.

We are all deal with lying.

And you know, I looked at a recent study and it said the average adult lies about 11 times a week.

That breaks down about one or two times a day.

I would tend to think it could be even much higher than that.

But the study also said that it's not Even this, this 11 times a week is not evenly distributed and that is about 5% of people tell about 50% of all lies.

There are prolific liars, you might say too.

Another study said that 60% of people lied at least once.

At least once doing a 10 minute conversation.

So if the two people are talking, then that 10 minute conversation, they probably lie on average at least once.

Are you lying to me?

Not right now, but I have to deal with this like everybody else does.

Have to make sure that I'm not deceiving you in any way.

You know, and it brings up a good question too, you know, because you think about it, we think about all these Bible characters, then we think we hold them in such high regard.

But you can name some Bible characters that also were liars.

And the Bible doesn't hide it.

The Bible is very open about it.

I can give you a few examples.

Take Abraham.

What did Abraham.

Can you think of a lie of Abraham?

Oh yeah.

He wanted to deceive Pharaoh into thinking, into thinking that he, that Sarah was not his wife because he feared for his own skin.

It was very selfish.

Yeah.

So he was ready to give his wife to pimp his wife out to Pharaoh because she's beautiful.

Afraid that fatal.

If Pharaoh found out it would kill him.

So he lied about it.

And you know what happened though?

Isaac did exactly the same thing.

And that's part of the danger of lying too is that your, your kids pick up on it and they pass it down and he got passed down even more.

What do you think of Jacob?

Yeah, his name means deception or deceiver.

And Jacob lied about the.

When he wanted his father's blessing, he lied about that.

You think of somebody like, how about King David?

He's a man the Bible describes after God's heart, God's own heart.

Did he lie?

Well, he certainly exercised deception when he had Uriah sent to the front lines because he was covering up, which is all deception.

He was covering up his own sin.

Yeah, that's, that's a lie.

He lied when he was being.

He went to the city of.

I think it's Gath, where he pretended like he was a crazy person, you know, and he wasn't.

Yeah.

And foaming at the mouth, you know.

And then you can think of.

How about Peter?

Peter.

Peter denied Christ.

Denied Christ three times, said I don't know him.

Can you imagine?

I don't know.

And we, we tend to think, well, we would never do that, you know.

Yeah.

You know, but, but we all have this proclivity toward deception and lying.

In fact, in Jeremiah 17:9, very familiar verse, it says the heart is Deceitful above all things and desperately sick.

Who can understand it?

It's deceitful, deceitful above all things that were deceit, deception.

Psalm 58:3 David says the wicked are estranged from the womb.

They go astray from birth.

Speaking what?

Lies.

Speaking lies.

And Paul in Romans chapter three says when he's describing the unregenerate man, he says their throat is an open grave.

They use their tongues to deceive.

Wow.

What's some ways we deceive?

We might say there's two main ways we deceive.

The main way that we might receive deceive would be purposefully falsifying information.

I mean speaking what you absolutely know is not true and it is a form of manipulation.

And then I think the other one other main one is by concealing information, by not speaking the truth and the whole truth, you keep some hidden so that someone might get the wrong impression.

And that is deceptive too.

But there are so many different ways of doing them.

We're going to go in some episodes that are coming up, get into more depth of this, of the different ways of deception and how it destroys relationships, but not just that, about also how we can become truthful and how we can be people of truth, which we should be if we claim the name of Christ.

You know, God is a God of truth, Satan is a liar and that's how God defines him.

So it's antithesis of who God is.

As a born again Christian, we should not be a people who lie.

In fact, Paul says in Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 25, therefore having putting away falsehood or deception or lying.

Let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor.

For we are members one of another talking to the body of Christ.

You know, there's a lot more we can say and are going to say in future episodes.

But I do want to say before I go that and remind you that truth brings freedom, deception brings divisions, deception fractures relationships.

And trust is broken in a relationship.

It's not healing is not going to happen overnight.

And we're going to talk about this too.

And if you're hurting today because of somebody lying to you, some deception, or you maybe you're carrying the weight of lying yourself and not being honest.

I just want to remind you there is grace, there is forgiveness.

There's a path forward.

We're going to be talking about that in But I just remind you let truth this week be your foundation.

Let Christ be your God.

And this starts with honesty.

It starts with God.

But you know, when I think even of the examples that we mentioned of some people that were liars in the Bible, that God pointed out as liars in the Bible, I can find hope because I know the end story.

I know how the Lord empowered them to turn their lives around.

Even though they may have been caught in a lifestyle of deception, they were able to turn that around.

And it's all because of the cross.

And we can take those that sin of deception and we can be cleansed.

Yes, but all because of the cross.

So there's a lot of hope.

And I know the pain that some of you are facing because of this deception.

And we encourage you just to tune in to the rest of the podcast in this series because I think you're going to find some real biblical hope and direction, like Sam said, to either overcome this proclivity yourself or how to respond.

You find direction for responding to someone that makes a habit of deceiving you.

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