Outreach Sermons: Don't Debate Samaritanism with a Samaritan from John 4

In this episode of the Witnessing Christ Podcast, Pastor Mark Parsons shares an outreach sermon based on the rich and relational account of Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well in John chapter 4. More than a beautiful moment of personal transformation, this story offers a masterclass in witnessing—showing us how to move from curiosity to gospel clarity in spiritual conversations.

Pastor Mark highlights how Jesus models a wise, gracious approach in engaging someone from a rival religious background—one that echoes the challenges Christians often face when witnessing to Latter-day Saints. Like the Samaritans, the LDS community shares some familiar language and biblical elements, but with rival scriptures, priesthoods, and temples. Rather than debating every doctrinal difference, Jesus leads the woman from physical thirst to spiritual need, revealing himself as the source of living water.

Listeners will walk step by step through this iconic conversation, seeing how Jesus:

• Goes intentionally to Samaria—crossing cultural and religious boundaries.
• Opens the door with a simple question and listens with care.
• Gently reveals sin, not to shame, but to open the door for grace.
• Leads the woman from religious confusion to a clear understanding of the Messiah.

Pastor Mark shares how this passage has shaped his own approach when witnessing to Latter-day Saints—including a moving story about a visit to the Mesa, Arizona LDS temple, where a picture of Jesus and the woman at the well sparked an unexpected gospel conversation with a young missionary.

This episode encourages every believer to move beyond debate toward genuine gospel dialogue. Whether you're speaking with a Mormon friend, a coworker from another faith, or someone disillusioned with religion, Jesus’ encounter in John 4 shows us how to offer living water, not just correct answers.

Key Takeaway:
We are not called to win arguments—we are called to share Jesus. Like the woman at the well, those who receive the living water of Christ can’t help but run to tell others, “Come and see.”

Transcript

Welcome back to another edition of the Witnessing Christ podcast. In this episode, we are going to take another listen to an outreach sermon that I preached a while back. This time from John chapter four and the story of the woman at the well of Samaria. So take a listen and be blessed as you go out and speak the truth in love.

Speaker 0 Gospel lesson for today, which will serve as the basis for the sermon message comes from John Chapter four. It's one of those most incredible conversations that takes place in the Bible, the Book of John Records. A number of those famous conversations you're probably more familiar with the one that comes right before this Jesus. Incredible conversation with Nicodemus in John three, where he tells him those words of John 316, God so loved the world. But this this text has become one of my favorites as a pastor, equipping Christians to witness, because it shows us how to be faithful and wise with the message that God has given us and how to be faithful and wise evangelists. There's one verse that was not included verse four comes right before our lesson, which says that Jesus had to go to Samaria. And that may not seem like that big of a deal to us. But for Jesus to go to Samaria, that was a big deal. Because back at this day and time, no good Jew ever went to Samaria. Why? Because hundreds of years before, right after the time of the Babylonian captivity, when the people came back and were establishing themselves in the land, they really placed themselves into three regions Galilee, Samaria and Judea and the Samaritans over the years had created their own rival style of worship. They had their own temple on Mount Gerizim. They had their own rival scriptures. They only believed in the five books of Moses, the original the first five of our Bible. And they had a rival priesthood. And so over the years, the Samaritans and the Jews continued to butt heads to such a degree that no good Jew would ever go to Samaria. They would actually walk all the way around it if they were going from Judea to Galilee, just so they wouldn't have to step foot on the ground of those evil, awful Samaritans who had a background in their faith and religion but had corrupted it over the years. So think about this. Why did Jesus have to go to Samaria? Listen. So Jesus came to a town in Samaria called Sikar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son, Joseph. Jacob's well was there. And Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon when a Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, Will you give me a drink? His disciples had gone into town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan. How can you ask me for a drink for Jews? Do not associate with Samaritans, John tells us. Jesus answered her. 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. Sir, the woman said, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father, Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as also did his sons and livestock? Jesus answered, Everyone who drinks this water points to the well, will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water. He told her, Go call your husband and come back. I have no husband, she replied. Jesus said to her, You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is you have had five husbands and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have said is quite true. Sir, the woman said, I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain. But you Jews claim that the place that we must worship is in Jerusalem. Woman. Jesus replied, Believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know. For salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. The woman said, I know that Messiah called Christ is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us. Then Jesus declared. I am the one speaking to you. I am he. The Gospel of our Lord. Please be seated. When was the last time you had one of those conversations? You know, the type of conversation I'm talking about here in a moment. One of those conversations with a family member, a friend, a coworker acquaintance that that started off casual enough. That started off in a way where both of you were just great friends. But all of a sudden, one of those topics came up. One of those topics maybe that we've been discussing as a nation over the last three years, those divisive topics. What happened then? As soon as you figured out that your friend or your family member stood on the other side of the aisle when it came to that conversation, what did you do? Well, if you're anything like I was, you put up your boxing gloves and you got ready to fight, didn't you? You looked at that conversation no longer just as a conversation, but as a battle to win, as part of a greater war that was taking place in our country. And if you could win that one battle, you could at least pat yourself on the back and say, well, at least I proved to one person why this or that is right. And regardless of what side of that conversation you were on, you wanted to win, didn't you? Unfortunately, even as Christians, we are prone to look at conversations as debates to win rather than as conversations to carry only convict someone or to curiously comfort someone or to carry only welcome them into the Kingdom of God Do you remember the last conversation that you had that was spiritual someone someone that maybe believes something entirely different than you or at least had a few core doctrines that you differed on. How did you view that conversation as an opportunity to learn and grow together? Or again, was it their side of the aisle and your side of the aisle and you just wanted to win. There is this part of us, even as Christians, that when we meet someone of a different belief system, we immediately see them as the enemy and we say to ourselves, I need to prove them wrong so that I can make sure that I'm right, but also so that I can win this conversation. And what we so often do is, rather than winning that convert or rather than trying to win, rather than trying to win their soul for Christ, we just want to win a conversation and maybe we never even talk about Christ at all I think back to my my seminary years, I was learned. I learned apologetics. I learned about creation versus evolution. And that was the topic at the time. I was a server in downtown Milwaukee, and almost everybody I worked with was some sort of unbeliever. And they would always try to rope me into conversations either about LGBTQ issues or about creation versus evolution. And the seminary wisdom that I had. I thought, Well, I can debate them and I can win this argument and I can prove to them that I am right and they're wrong. And looking back at those days, I realize something. I never actually talked to them about what really mattered. Jesus and the living water. I was holding that back as if, well, once I've won this argument, maybe then I'll share Jesus with them. Well, is there a better way to be more faithful and wise with those conversations when it comes to having an opportunity to share Jesus? Today we are going to walk back through John Chapter four. I encourage you to have the text in front of you. and we're going to walk with Jesus to Samaria to meet this woman at the well. I mentioned that at this time in Judea, Samaria and Galilee, they were butting heads because of their religion. They had a rival temple, a rival scripture and a rival priesthood. Well, that's a lot like the work that I do in witnessing to Mormons. Mormons have a lot of similar language, a lot of similar terminology, and even in a sense, some similar doctrine. But it's a rival doctrine. It's a rival priesthood, in a sense, as a rival scripture, in essence, they've got actually four books that they believe in the Bible, The Book of Mormon Doctrine and Covenants of Great Price. So when I interact with them, I have all of these things in mind of how we're different. But when I interact with them, I learn a lot from Jesus at the well in Samarra, he goes, it happens like that. So he went to a town in Samarra called Speicher near the plot of ground that Jacob had given his son, Joseph Jacob's Well was there and tired as he was from the journey. He sat down by the well. It was about noon. John gives us a number of details here that were like, why all the details, John? Why the time of day? Well, that will come into play later on when we learn about this woman that had had five husbands and the man she's with now isn't married to him. Why does she come here in the middle of the day, the heat of the day, all by herself, probably because of that lifestyle. But notice what Jesus does. He doesn't come to that well right away to just call her out for her sinful lifestyle. He settles in, he gets comfortable, he sits down, and here's what he does next. And right before this, he had sent his disciples away. In verse eight, his disciples had gone into town to buy food. Why is that so important in this text? I think before I began witnessing the Mormons, I just read right. My that was like, why that detail? Well, can you imagine this young or middle aged woman walking up to a well with 13 men standing by it? This conversation would never have taken place. Mob evangelism usually doesn't work, and so it's a simple little detail. But Jesus is here all by himself, ready to have a relational dialog with this woman. When a woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, Will you give me a drink? He starts off with a question. When was the last time in a conversation with someone about spiritual things where you actually stop to take the time to ask questions of them, to really get to know what they believe. To show that you're interested in their background. Interested in their story. Jesus teaches us how to be curious and start with a question. Notice what the woman does, though. Verse nine The Samaritan woman said to him, You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink? And John, for his readers later in the first century, says four Jews did not associate with Samaritans. This woman, since she was little, had been taught, you're a Samaritan and there are the Jews. And when you run into a Jew. Here's how the conversation usually goes. You argue about your temple. You argue about your priests. You argue about your Bible, and then you walk away angry. That's how they had been taught to have this debate and so had been training for this debate her whole life. And she's ready to say, Well, what are you doing? You can't have a conversation with me. I'm a Samaritan and you're a Jew. But notice what Jesus doesn't do. He doesn't take the bait to debate Samaritan ism with a Samaritan. My friends, don't take the don't take the bait to debate evolutionary theory with an evolutionist. Instead find a way to share Jesus over and over again. I have to remind myself, don't take the bait to debate Mormonism with a mormon. There's a better way that we're going to talk about after lunch today. Jesus, though, instead goes in this direction. He 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 asked one question, got the woman thinking, and he completely changes the conversation in a single sentence. He goes from talking about everyday life to spiritual, eternal life. My friends, Jesus is teaching us something here. He is teaching us how to go from talking about everyday life to talking about eternal life. Sometimes we make that way too hard. We're like, Well, I'll bring up Jesus when the conversation seems natural. I'll bring up spiritually, turn to life things when the topic comes up. Well, sometimes the topic is never going to specifically come up, but it's easy to transition from talking about a physical thing to a spiritual thing, just like Jesus does. But notice the woman. She's not ready to go there yet. She has a practical problem with this, sir. The woman said, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father, Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock. Her problem with this whole idea of Jesus giving her water is practical at this point. You don't have a bucket. You don't have another. Well, where are you going to get this water? The Samaritans, in addition to priding themselves about the temple that was right on the hillside of Mt. Gerizim, right behind them. In addition to providing themselves about their priesthood and their books of the Bible, this well was one of the things they prided themselves on. So she's pretty much saying, like, so do you have another. Well, we've got a well from Jacob. Yeah. Jacob gave you Jews lots of things like years in slavery in Egypt eventually and a whole bunch of heartache. But we got to. Wow. Do you have a. Well, that's kind of her point here. She wants to debate again based on this. Well, Jesus again, doesn't take the debate. And he says this verse 30, he says, Everyone, everyone who drinks this water, this physical water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. Jesus once again moves away from talking about the physical to the spiritual. He helps this woman understand that he is offering her something not just for this moment, but for the rest of her physical and eternal spiritual life. Living water. What is this living water that he's offering? What's really himself through his word? And he says that once this water becomes a part of your life, it wells up inside of you and comes back out. We'll come back to that later what this welling up looks like. The woman said, one more time, Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water. She still doesn't get it, does she? She's like, If you've got a water, well, somewhere that's closer to, say, sidecar, or if you've got a water source that I don't have to keep making this mile or two mile trek back and forth with a jug on my shoulder, I'll take it. And Jesus, once again, it's like, woman, you're not getting it. But he doesn't say that. He's very kind. But notice what he does. He goes in a different direction now and he says, Go call your husband and come back. And she says, I have no husband. This is a very pivotal moment in the conversation. Jesus knows something about this woman that he shouldn't know. He knows that she has no husband. And you might be saying, like, why did he go there? Up until this point, the conversation was so kind. It was so caring. It was so loving. Why does he bring up that? Why did he bring up that? Because that was the problem that this woman had. She was looking for love, perhaps in all the wrong places. She was trying to satiate her need for the divine with things of this world. And it showed a pattern. We don't know exactly why this woman had five husbands back then. Men died for all sorts of reasons. They went off to war and never came home. They went out to the fields to plow and they fell over dead. Happens in the Bible all the time. Could it have been divorce? Could it have been disease? Or perhaps the reason that she's had five husbands and now the man she's with isn't her husband is. Some commentators assumed that she was infertile. And in that culture, that was a big deal. If you couldn't bear children, you were looked down upon as cursed. And so perhaps this woman just kept getting divorced over and over again because the husband said, we can't have kids and we need to have kids to carry on our lineage. She's got all that baggage. And you would have thought that this woman like when Jesus starts talking about husbands, she would run. But notice that his kindness has led to honesty. She says, I have no husband. Jesus says, You're right. When you say you have no husband, the fact is you have five. Had had five. And the man you're in now with is not your husband. What you have said is quite true when it comes to our conversations with people that don't have the same belief system as we do. We have a tendency to usually stop the conversations about here. We get to a place where there's some sort of conflict, some sort of barrier, and we stop. It starts to get uncomfortable. But this is where we need to press through like Jesus does here. He has to talk about sin before he can talk about grace. He has to show this woman there is bad news before she's ready to receive the good news. The bad news? This woman already realized the problem. She already realized her life was not as it should be. She needed something to satiate her soul that she had never been able to find. But one more time, this woman refuses to acknowledge this fact. She is not comfortable talking about relationships. She's focused on talking about religion. So notice what she does one more time. She goes back to talking about religion and she says This verse 19, she says, Sir, I can see that you're a prophet. How does she know he's a prophet? Well, he knows something or about her, and he's just met her. And she says, Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, points to Garrison behind her. But you Jews claim that the place that you must worship is in Jerusalem. Her question is really this. Where is God? And where do we worship him? That's really a question that that Mormons are asking to where is God found? Is he found in the Bible alone? Or do you need the Book of Mormon Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price? Is the Bible and Christianity enough, or do you need the restored gospel of Joseph Smith? Do you need to go and do Temple work Ceilings for the dead, baptisms for the dead? Do you need all of that? That's the question that Mormons want to ask about. But more importantly, I want to get them asking the question, who is Jesus? Who is the Messiah? What does the Messiah mean for me? So that's what Jesus doesn't do again. He doesn't debate Samaritan ism, but he does. It does answer her question a very interesting way. He says, You want to know where true worship is taking place, where God is at? He says, woman. First 21. Believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the father. Neither on this mountain points to Gerizim nor in Jerusalem, you Samaritans. He calls it out. Worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know for. Salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. That's what Jesus does. He answers that question very simply. Where is God? Where are we supposed to worship God? Is it here in Samaria on Mount Gerizim? Or is it back in Jerusalem? And Jesus simply says, If you want to know where to worship God right now, where the true sacrifices are taking place, where the true temple is at, where the true priesthood is at. That is back in Jerusalem, because all of that is pointing towards something that's going to happen. And that's where Jesus goes next. He says a time is coming when none of that's going to matter. What was that time? Well, every time that Jesus uses this phrase in the gospel of John, he's talking about one thing, the cross. He is talking about that moment when he going to die for the sins of the world, when that temple curtain is going to be torn into from top to bottom, and all people will have direct access to God in spirit and in truth. And the temple system will be no more. It will be fulfilled. And he's saying a time is coming. How would that time provide for this woman and what she was needing? Because on the cross, when Jesus cried out to his father and he says, I thirst, he is having the cosmic thirst. He is suffering sin and death for the world's sin and death, including this woman that he's talking to right here. He got the cosmic thirst so that you and I could receive living water. And that's what he tells this woman. I'm coming, I'm here. And she goes one more time. She thinks this is the trump card that's going to just knock it out. She's like, You know what? I know that Messiah called the Christ is coming. When He comes, he'll explain everything. She's like, You know what? This is that same debate we Jews and Samaritans have been having. And the time is going to come when the Messiah is going to show up and just be like, Yes, sorry, Jews. The Samaritans were right all along. And that's what she was hoping for. But this was the moment that Jesus was waiting for. This is the moment where I just feel like heaven just stops for a moment. And I don't know if Jesus had a smile on his face or tears running down his cheek. But he looks at the woman. So that's me. The Messiah that you're waiting for. I am the one speaking to you. I am he. And the woman got it. And then right after this, the disciples show up and they ruin everything. That's not quite how John says it, but they show right back up there like, Hey, Jesus, we brought food, and he's like, I'm good. They're like, What? How did you get food? And then there's the really important part of what happens next. Do you remember what this woman does? She leaves her water jar, the very thing, the burden that had brought her there. And she runs back into the village of Sidecar that she had kind of walked out of in a very scared sort of way, just hours before she runs back in and she says, I just met a man that knows everything about me. Everything all of that was five husbands. And the fact that I'm living with a man that's not my husband. He knows that. And he loves me. Come and see. And they did. Do you know what happened there? This woman got living water. And then as soon as she had it, it welled up inside of her and she had to share it. There is this part of us as Christians that sometimes says, I don't know enough to share the living water. I don't know the Bible as well as Pastor so I can't go and do evangelism work. Had this woman gone to catechism class, had she studied the Bible much, had she gone to the school with the rabbis? Had she gone to a seminary? She had not. And yet, right away, when she met Jesus, she became a witness. And she just went, come and see, come and see. And they did. And they heard Jesus words. And they too, were brought to faith. A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of taking a group of Christian young people from Wisconsin Lutheran College and Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary on a mission trip down to Mormon country in Gilbert and Mesa, Arizona. 15 students came, and many of them told me upfront, I'm terrified. I'm an introvert. I I'm not somebody that likes to go out and knock on doors and witness to people. And so we trained them in how to share a simple lore and gospel message. And then one afternoon we decided, well, it's been great knocking on doors, but we're going to go right to the place where we know the Mormons are going to be at. So we went to the temple in Mesa. I don't know if you've ever driven by a mormon temple. It's where they do their baptisms for the dead, where they do their ceilings for eternal marriages and a bunch of other rituals. There are these beautiful places. The one here, they've got a pond out in front of it that looks like the Lincoln Pond. Like it's that big. Like it is massive. And so we walked into this place, and you only can go in the front doors. And then we headed across the street to a visitor center. And Sister White. She is in LDS Mormon missionary. And she has the role and responsibility of being a temple tour guide. So she was walking us through a diorama of the temple. We asked her question after question about her family and her faith, and this young lady was extremely articulate. I don't think I've ever met a 19 year old girl that was able to talk and use illustrations in the way that she did. Every part of the temple, she had a personal story that she could share to help bring tears to our eyes is what her hope was. She had this burning in the bosom, she said. Every time she was in the temple, she continued to share. The three young gals that were with me did an incredible job being curious rather than confrontational. That was something we drilled into their minds all week. Just be curious. And she shared about the temple over and over again. And eventually I was looking out the back window of this place off there to the left, and I noticed something she's been telling us about the temple and why we need modern temples for about an hour. And looking out the window to the left, you can't see it in this picture. I'll show it to you in the next one. There is the temple, the Mesa Temple, in all of its grandeur. She's talking about temples. And then on the wall behind her. Do you see the picture there? I'll give you one more slide here. It is a picture of the story we just went through. And I was looking at that the whole time and I was like, God gave me that picture right there. He didn't know that I was going to need this. I had been preparing for this message. And right there on the wall behind this manmade temple was the story of Jesus and the woman, the well and I. What I love is you can actually see up in the top left there is the temple on top of Mount Jersey. And so after we had given Sister White an hour to share her faith with us, I said, Boy, I thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing all this. I actually learned quite a bit from her about the temple that even though I've been studying this for two and a half years straight, that I didn't know. So I thanked her for that. And then I said, So as I've been standing here listening to you, I've been having just this hard time because I'm looking out the window at this temple here. And I at the same time, I'm looking at this story where Jesus told a woman, a time is coming very shortly when you're not going to need temples. And then I proceeded to take her on a walk through John Chapter four and shared with her the true living water. At the very end, her, her missionary companion named Sister Doyle, came back at the very end, right when Sister White said so. It sounds like that story is saying a time is coming when we won't need temples. And that's when Sister Doyle goes. What the Bible said we wouldn't need temples. And I was like, you said it, not me. And then we proceeded to have a very, very good conversation about how Jesus came as the fulfillment of the temple that it's not about our work, but about the work that has already been accomplished for us. Do you know also what we did there? We listened. We earned the right to be heard. And then we just looked for something. Not always as God going to put a picture on the wall behind you of a Bible story that you can use to witness. But sometimes he will. At the end of this conversation. Sister White came up to me and gave me a huge hug and said, like, you are the very first Christians ever that have actually acted like you loved me for me, not just because you wanted to win a debate. And I was like, Thank you. That's what we train people to do. And she said, I'm only doing this for about six more months, and I'm going to be thinking about this conversation every day for six more months. Believe it or not, she lives in the town of Logan, Utah, where we are going on a mission trip here in June, which will be like two weeks after she gets out. I am hoping that we didn't get her her contact, but I am hoping one of our missionaries will knock on her door and she will get to have another conversation with a Christian that will share Jesus with her. My friends, there are a number of ways that you can handle. Political and social and sports debates. There are a number of ways you can handle religious conversations. I'd encourage you to take the faithful and wise approach that Jesus gives us in John four. To go and get settled in wherever it might be. What's your modern day wells of Samaria? I don't know what that is. We're the gathering places that people go. It could be right here at the YMCA. If you've got a membership, come here and strike up conversations with people as you're at the water fountain. Share the living water with him. I don't know. You'll find ways, but it's my encouragement. Don't just wait for those opportunities. Be like Jesus and intentionally go somewhere to seek out the lost. Let's stand and let's pray together. Let's take all the things we've been talking about and go to our good Lord in prayer. Gracious Lord of the church. We come before you now. And we acknowledge the fact that, unlike you, we often run from the same areas of this world rather than toward it. We run from the women at the well rather than toward them. Lord, allow us to take this curious approach rather than the confrontational approach. Allow us to first see our own sin Allow us to talk about sin in a way that is open and honest, so that when we talk to others, they can be open and honest to Lord, be with truth and love ministry, be with the Christian witnesses Let them take this precious living water and continue to satiate their own hearts and lives with it, but then to share it with others.

Truth in Love Ministry Welcome back to another edition of the Witnessing Christ podcast. In this episode, we are just going to take another listen to an outreach sermon that I preached a while back. This time from John chapter four and the story of the woman at the well of Samaria. I have found that this story has been a really impactful one on myself and many Christian witnesses to help us to really understand it. Take a curious rather than confrontational approach in our outreach to Latter-day Saints. There are so many similarities really between The LDS and the Samaritan world of Jesus Day as far as the conflict that often rises in our conversations with each other. So take a listen and be blessed as you go out and speak the truth in love.

Speaker 0 Lord, we ask all of these things in Jesus. Good and precious saving name. Amen.