Building an Authentic Faith - Pardon

John 4:4-26

There’s a part of me that understands this woman at the well. At the beginning of my sophomore year of college I went through a difficult time. I was turning away from God and making some poor choices and the last thing I wanted was to be around the friends I had made through Inter-Varisty Christian Fellowship. I got up and walked out of a fellowship meeting one week, I stopped going to church and I avoided my friends as often as I could. While I was running in all kinds of directions, what I was really doing was hiding. I was hiding from my sin and from my self and the choices I was making. Some people hide from their sin and their failures by running, some hide in alcohol or drugs, some hide in reckless spending and shopping, some hide in destructive relationships, but the more we try to hide from our sin and from our self, the more we end up in deeper and darker places of despair and isolation.

That’s what we see going on with this woman at the well. She comes to draw water at the 6th hour, or at noon, because she didn’t want to be seen by the other women. Drawing water was a daily chore for women and they wouldn’t do it during the heat of the day - they would do it in the cool of the morning. Every morning women would travel to the well together, draw their water and then return to their homes together, but this Samaritan woman came at noon because she didn’t want to be seen by the others. Maybe she was tired of the stares and comments. She was hiding, hiding in her sin and hiding in her shame.

We come to find out during her encounter with Jesus that this woman has been married 5 times and the man she currently lives with is not her husband. She has made some poor choices in life and to avoid the stares and comments of the other women, she didn’t travel with them in the morning – she waited and then would come alone to get the water she needed at noon. Not only was she hiding from others, she was hiding from herself, after all if she didn’t have to face the other women she didn’t have to face the reality of her own situation. For me, as long as I kept running I not only didn’t have to face others, but on some level I didn’t have to face myself.

While our circumstances might be different, the reality is that we all spend a lot of time hiding, we hide who we really are from others, we hide from ourselves and yes, we even try to hide from God, and we hide because we don’t want to come to face to face with the reality of our sin, but living an authentic faith as a follower of Jesus Christ means we stop hiding from our sin and we confront it by coming face to face with Jesus. Look at what happens when the woman arrives at the well, notice who’s there – it’s Jesus, and while she could have laid low and kept on hiding, she didn’t. When Jesus asks her for a drink and engages her in conversation – she could have run away, but she didn’t. Authentic faith doesn’t hide and it doesn’t run from sin – it is willing to confront it and that’s what Jesus does. He helps this woman confront the reality of her sinful life. Jesus is the one who says to her, Go call your husband and come back. When the woman says I have no husband Jesus is able to help reveal to her the reality of her life – that’s right, he says, you have had 5 husbands and the man you are with now is not your husband. Jesus confronts her with the reality of who she is and he’s not there to judge and condemn her he’s there to simply help her own up to her sin - so that she can be forgiven and move beyond it.

An authentic faith is willing to confront the reality of who we are. As followers of Jesus we can’t ignore our sin and pretend like it doesn’t exist – we have to be willing to name it, confront it and confess it. It’s a painful process, but when we are alone sometime we need to sit down and honestly evaluate our life and we need to ask ourselves “how do I treat God and how I treat others?”. We need to think about our interactions with people, and the choices we make every day. And we need to ask ourselves, "How do we spend my time, my money, my energy?"
What are the things we pursue in life? Where do our hopes and dreams lie? Do our attitudes line up with the will of God? Do our actions reflect the life of Jesus? How do we answer these questions?

I don’t know about you, but there are many ways that my heart and my actions don’t line up with God’s will for my life. Just this week at the United Methodist Women meeting we saw pictures of children from Uganda who have nothing – literally they have nothing. We heard stories of how these children will wander with the cattle through the garbage dumps to see what they can find to eat or wear or use and I once again came face to face with Jesus who said to me, Andy, what you are doing with your resources? There are children who have nothing and you have so much – what are you doing?

It’s not an easy exercise but can we sit down and write out our sin, can we put it down on paper? Greed, lust, pride, self-centeredness. It’s not fun to name them, but can we be honest and own up to our sin? Gossip, anger, bitterness, jealousy. An authentic faith doesn’t hide from sin – it confronts it and names it and owns it and confesses it to God. Now once we are willing to do this - the door is opened for God to forgive. Once we confess our sin, we aren’t left holding on to it, because God pardons –God forgives. You’ll see as we keep going through this sermon series that I use “P” words: the first week was people, last week was profession and so when I wanted to talk about forgiveness I decided to use the word pardon, but one of the things I came to realize about the word pardon is that you only receive a pardon after you have been found guilty. A pardon comes only after the crime has been named, so for us to receive the pardon of God, or the forgiveness of God, we have to be willing to name our sin, but once we name it – God forgives it. Are we willing to receive God’s pardon today? Are we willing to accept and embrace God’s gift of forgiveness?

Look at John 4:10 – Jesus says, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. Jesus goes on and says, 4:14 – whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst. Indeed the water I give will become a spring welling up to eternal life. This living water which is a gift from God – it’s called grace and forgiveness because it is God’s forgiveness that leads us to eternal life. It’s God’s grace that gushes forth within us to bring life, so will we accept it?

Accepting God’s grace begins with simple words, it begins in faith and trust saying, God I know I am a sinner, please forgive me. But then these words, this prayer and the desire to be forgiven, needs to bring freedom to our lives and many times that freedom doesn’t come until we are willing to forgive ourselves and allow God to take away our guilt and shame. If we don’t forgive ourselves, then like the Samaritan women we will continue to just hide. So how do we fully receive God’s grace and learn to forgive ourselves? How do we begin to experience the freedom that comes with God’s pardon?

The first thing we need to do is stop listening to Satan and start listening to God. You know the word Satan means accuser and I am convinced that Satan, as the accuser, is alive and well, and it’s his voice that constantly tells us that because of all we have done we can never be loved or forgiven by God. There are times that voice is so loud and clear that we can’t hear anything else. It’s time we stop listening to Satan and start listening to God.

Listening to God is the whole point of the 60/60 experiment. I’m excited that there are over 25 people who have told us that they are doing the 60/60 experiment and the whole point of the exercise is to help us hear more consistently the voice of God. If you haven’t been here the last few weeks the 60/60 experiment is our attempt to at least once every hour for 60 days intentionally think about God. I have set my watch alarm to go off once an hour, others have posted notes or are trying to think of God when the phone rings or when they get into their cars – whatever the prompt is, the point is to tune into the truth and the will of God. I might suggest that if you are doing the 60/60 experiment - that this week when you are prompted to think about God, instead of telling yourself that your life matters to God and God loves you – tell yourself that you are forgiven. When the alarm goes off name a sin you struggle with and then tell yourself – I am pardoned, I am forgiven.

Another way we can stop listening to Satan and start listening to God is to turn more consistently to the word of God. Daily Bible reading, weekly Bible studies and Sunday School helps us tune out the lies that surround us and help us refocus our hearts and minds on the truth of God’s grace. You can also get a prayer partner to help remind you that you are forgiven. I had a roommate for a while and we agreed to remind each other every day that we were forgiven by God – it was a powerful time where we each experienced more of the freedom and power that comes with God’s grace.

So an authentic faith confronts sin and it accepts the pardon God offers, but then it must – it absolutely must go one step farther. An authentic faith also pardons others. An authentic faith forgives others. This is what we say we will do each time we pray the Lord’s prayer: forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. or Forgive us our sin as we forgive those who sin against us. Jesus drives the same point home pretty clearly in his sermon on the mount.

Matthew 6:14-15: For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

If we aren’t willing to forgive others then God will not forgive us. It doesn’t get any clearer than that. If we aren’t willing to forgive others then God will not forgive us. One of the forces which hold us back in our faith and one of the forces which I think holds back the church from being all God calls us to be is our inability to truly forgive others. We might say the words, I forgive you, but we don’t act on it in any significant way. We say the words but then we hold on to bitterness or continue to work against those we have issues with. Our inability to forgive one another blocks God’s grace from flowing freely into our lives and into our church and this keeps the power of God from being experienced and revealed in our world.

My guess is that most of us right now could think of someone that we are struggling to forgive. It might be a spouse; it might be a parent or child, a brother or sister, a coworker or even a friend who has betrayed us. What I want us to do is picture this person in our mind and ask God to show us how we can forgive them. What will it mean for us to offer forgiveness? What will we do this week to seek reconciliation? We can’t just talk about forgiving others – we need to get specific and then get serious about doing it.

Building an authentic faith doesn’t just accept God’s pardon for our sin – it offers a pardon to those who have sinned against us and when we allow God’s grace to flow freely through our lives not only will our relationships be strengthened, but we will be changed and our faith will grow strong.