Sunday Message — The Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost 2026.10.11 · Naeane Church Sunday Worship The Holy Spirit Delivers Me From the Pressure to Perform at Work
Sunday Message — The Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost
2026.10.11 · Naeane Church Sunday Worship
The Holy Spirit Delivers Me From the Pressure to Perform at Work
Text: Colossians 3:12–24
Today I want to preach on this: the Holy Spirit delivers me from the pressure to perform at work.
Last week we marked the nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost. Our church, from the first Sunday after Pentecost through today, the twentieth, has been preaching a continuous series on the time after Pentecost.
Last week I preached on the spirit of the basics of living — food, clothing, and shelter. These basics send an endless message inside us from birth to death: you have to earn more, have more, prepare more, store more. Under that pressure, dread and worry and anxiety keep piling up, and we can’t help but live under it. I preached about the process of pushing that off, again and again, in the name Jesus is the Christ, and escaping that pressure as the power of that name keeps working in us.
Today, attached to that “you have to earn more,” there’s something else: “you have to do better.” Earning more touches the home, the workplace, and all of social life. So “do better,” “be more outstanding,” “come in first” all connect in the same vein. How do we resolve this, how do we push it off, how do we reinterpret it — that’s the angle I want to preach from today.
As always, five questions.
One. How Did I Fight the Spiritual Battle This Week?
Follow me. Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Christ.
I keep calling Jesus is the Christ. I call it even in my dreams. Perhaps this is because, from graduating university until I went in as a military chaplain, I was trained for years in a certain organization, so it has become a habit. With that as the backdrop, this week too I kept meditating on the spirit of the basics of living.
I especially break into a cold sweat if I miss even one meal. This week there was such a time. Absorbed in my work, when lunchtime passed and it got to around 12:40, 12:50, cold sweat came pouring out. And it didn’t stop there — the thought followed: hey, keep this up and you’ll have no strength left today, you won’t even be able to work. Other times it comes as just a thought, but this time my strength drained away and I felt like I was dying.
This week I ran an experiment on my own body. In the old days, at that point the conclusion would set in — oh no, keep this up and something’s going to happen to me — and it flowed that way. The body flows toward you’re going to die, toward all your strength is draining, and so you drain even more. But this week I kept calling Jesus is the Christ. Experimenting like that, it didn’t drop below a certain point. Still, on the other hand, I thought I’d better stop experimenting, and I ate. Even so, I kept calling Jesus is the Christ.
And this week, as I kept calling Jesus is the Christ, I really felt something. Until now, within the familiar home environment I was used to, I kept experiencing problems getting solved by calling that name. But now my eyes have opened and I’ve come to see the world. In the old days I’d challenge the world thinking I have to conquer it by my own strength, and end up drained. But now — I should take it on, yes, but how? By pushing off, again and again, the countless situations coming at me from the world, with Jesus is the Christ, reinterpreting them, changing them by the Spirit’s power. Then I began making everything I saw a matter for prayer.
And doing that, a heart to conquer the world arose in me. Like Genesis 1:27–28. But that conquering heart isn’t I have to do it — it’s God does it. As my heart is conquered by Christ, the world comes to look conquerable to that same degree. So this principle is really simple, and yet I felt there’s also a part that is truly hard, even impossible. This may be one of the biggest turning points of my life.
Two. How Deeply Did I Come to Know Genesis 3:15 This Week?
What we call the human being’s greatest problem in Scripture is the “root problem.” What is the root problem? The human being ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and the disaster, the disease, the satan, all the troubles that had been outside came inside here. And the problem is they don’t leave. They came in, and when the time comes, they start to act. So the human being, from birth, has the Spirit of God departed, and from birth is under God’s curse and wrath.
This isn’t something fixed by doing a bit better after birth. From Genesis 3 on it has come down, generation to generation, through the genes. So this isn’t fixed by effort, by doing good deeds, by keeping the law well. It isn’t fixed because I was well educated and I’m a pastor or an elder, or because my father is an elder or a pastor, or because I’m a little child or an infant, or because I’m old. It’s there because we are human.
So to solve that root problem, God already gave a name, from Genesis 3:15.
Let’s do the first word. Jesus is the Christ.
The Christ has to come from outside. It isn’t that the being inside changes itself — God has to come from outside and change it. So He gave the covenant in Genesis 3:15.
Now, today’s theme is that the Holy Spirit delivers me from the pressure to perform at work. How does this connect with Genesis 3:1–5? After the root problem came inside, the human being, since inside he’s made himself god, tries to display himself. In what form? He flows toward displaying his own worth by doing some work impressively, by producing enormous results. That’s the human picture that keeps appearing from Genesis 3 on.
So in Genesis 4, 5, 6, what shows up? Cain, right away, and then countless people. One builds a city, erects something great; one invents some device; one has musical talent and composes something; one comes out like a conqueror and boasts, I’ve killed many people. What is this? Inside, he’s made himself god, so the world keeps advancing by each one displaying something to display his own worth.
But what kind of human being did the LORD God give the covenant to, in Genesis 3:15? That shows up from Genesis 12 on. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph show up — and those people are humans whose weaknesses keep showing more than any greatness of their own. So what’s different about them? They keep calling the name of Jesus, the name of Christ, and in them God works and the Spirit works, so a new heart and new eyes keep opening. So those people, not by their own ability but by the power of Christ being with them, see their work get solved more and more, and not their own name but God’s power keeps appearing and conquering the world. The human race splits into these two kinds. This week I came to know Genesis 3:15 that way.
Three. Explaining Today’s Text on the Foundation of Genesis 3:15
Genesis 3:15 is the most important foundation in Scripture, the most central and most fundamental verse to interpret everything by. That the Christ is coming is the promise of the Old Testament, and at last, in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, He came. His name is Jesus. So we confess it always. Jesus is the Christ.
Christ, in John 19:30, solved every problem of yours and mine, so that when we draw on that name we are given the authority and blessing of becoming children of God. Then He rose and ascended, and after being at the right hand of God, the One He sent in His own name is the Spirit of Acts 2. That Spirit then works from Acts 2 through 28.
And in Acts 13, the representative figure who appears is a man named Saul. His first, second, and third missionary journeys run from Acts 13 through 28, and among those around him is a disciple named Epaphras. Where was he from? From Colossae. So, having heard Paul’s teaching, he went to his own region and preached and planted a church — the Colossian church. So the Colossian church is not a church Paul himself planted. It was planted by Epaphras around AD 50 to 52.
That church went on for about ten years, to around AD 60 to 62, when word reached Paul: a problem had arisen in Colossae. They were worshiping angels; and though Jesus the Christ solves every problem, some were saying the name of Christ alone doesn’t solve it all — you also have to do this, and that, and take in the world’s philosophy too. A few such problems arose. So the letter Paul wrote while in prison is Colossians.
Today’s text is Colossians 3:12–24. The content of Colossians 1 is: you have become children of God by believing that Jesus is the Christ. And if you’ve become children, you don’t live the way the world lives — now, by God’s standard, since Christ is within you, you must live newly. So from there it addresses how to conduct home life, how husband and wife should respect and submit, how to raise children, and how slaves should serve their masters. That’s the content of chapter 3.
Today’s text, 3:12–24, especially addresses slaves. Colossae had many slaves — many freedmen too, many Romans, many Greeks, all mixed together — and among them it speaks especially to slaves: hey, don’t just put on a show to be seen; as to the true Master, the Absolute One, go out and serve your masters that way.
Four. The Part I Want to Explain in Detail
I said the apostle Paul wrote to the Colossian church too. That church was about ten years on from its founding, so it already had a foundation. Like Genesis 3:1–5 — that the human being is born with a root problem he can’t solve by his own power; that under the power of sin, taught by the satan, in sin, having left God, he was finally in death, in eternal death and judgment, and it passed down to his descendants; that the only name to escape it is Jesus the Christ; that Christ solved every problem and we became children of God. So what must we do? In the name of Jesus the Christ, keep breaking the devil’s head, carry out world evangelization, and keep being filled with the Spirit. The Colossian church had this foundation in place.
They especially had Spirit-filling. We’ve gone from week one to this twentieth week always speaking of the Spirit, and the Colossian church had it too. The Spirit is not the kind of spirit they talk about at prayer retreats, the one doing a lot of tongues, nor a wandering, shamanistic spirit, but the One whom Christ sent from the right hand of God. He testifies that Jesus is the Christ; He came inside here; He doesn’t just do tongues but, within, brings the word to mind, and above all, in every situation testifies only that Jesus is the Christ; He testifies that I am a child of God, and makes us conquer the world. The Colossian church already had all this.
Let’s confess it together. Jesus is the Christ. I am a child of God. Every problem is finished. Satan, go. Filled with the Spirit. World evangelization.
Then, in today’s text, what I want to focus on is this. Paul is telling the slaves not to just put on an eye-service show. Why? Because Paul knew the habits of the slaves in the Colossian church. In those days a slave was the master’s possession, his property, never able to escape for life. So slaves didn’t work hard as such — when the master watched they’d make a show of working, and when he didn’t watch they wouldn’t, just making a display. They were too sensitive to being seen. Whether they worked hard was automatically connected to whether the master was applying pressure.
Then they came into the church. The church is supposed to be all equal, but here too the same habit comes out. When someone’s watching they seem to work; when no one’s watching they don’t; when their position gets noticed they do; otherwise they don’t. That habit shows right through. So Paul tells them: you’ve become children of God, so now don’t do it watching for eyes; don’t do it that way in the world either. Then how? As to the Master. And the Master here is the Absolute One, the Almighty God. Not a mere earthly master, but the Absolute One, the Lord God who moves and makes and leads and sustains this world — serve as to Him, both here and outside. That’s what Paul is telling the slaves.
Five. How Will We Apply This Word to Our Lives?
First, let’s confess it together. Jesus is the Christ.
What always matters is where I am right now. I am a person who has escaped the root problem of Genesis 3:1–5. Not only escaped — I’ve come to possess the name Christ inside, as a child of God. I have the authority to break the devil’s name and power with Jesus is the Christ, and I’m moving toward world evangelization.
But today there’s something we must renew. Like the word to the Colossian church, we too live in society now. And society is performance-driven, work-driven, ability-driven. We’ve lived that way since birth, and now we’ve come into the church. So when something comes up, we try to do well, try to work hard. Koreans especially — myself included — are prone to this.
There’s a story I often tell. Someone connected to our church married and went to live abroad. There, people work from nine in the morning to five, and when it strikes, that’s it. They don’t work. They have so much free time, going off on outings. To me, it doesn’t make sense. Can you get by doing only that much? But that friend finds me baffling. Because I work from morning till night — no quitting time, working until eleven, twelve at night. Looking honestly, I’m a man truly addicted to work. No rest. There’s no five or six o’clock, and even less a nine, ten, eleven. To that friend I’d look like a madman. Not that I’ve gone mad for work — it’s just that I can’t not do it. I see myself caught in addiction. Work addiction, and second, performance addiction. Addiction means doing it mindlessly, just doing it.
And this isn’t just me. My whole generation is caught in that addiction, because Korean society flowed that way. My parents’ generation was worse — having built up Korea after the war, they had no rest. Looking quietly at it, we have to be recognized by doing something, recognized by producing many results, and this has become an impulsive addiction. And it came into the church.
So even in believing God: ah, I have to do something hard, I have to produce a lot of results, build a big church, have many members, get a doctorate academically, do everything well. It just presses down. So if I do it a little well, God recognizes me; if I do it a little poorly, God keeps frowning at me, disregarding me, rebuking me — that picture is seized in me at all times. So there’s no rest.
Perhaps the biggest keyword of my sixty-some years of life is inferiority and guilt. The inferiority was there in middle and high school too, but subtly; from when I began ministry until now it has always been there. Competing with pastors is right out in the open, so inside, the desire not to lose is so strong that, flailing to win it, I’ve come this far. What is all this? It’s that I’ve brought God in by the same standard as the outside. God seems to be saying: you have to do well; your church has to be this size; you have to work so many hours a day. By that standard I keep driving myself. I’m seeing Father God by that standard, serving Him by that standard. So there’s no rest inside me. That God the Father kindly, tenderly, warmly embraces me — that’s missing.
Perhaps that’s my picture, and in this state I go out again. With only a difference of intensity, you’re probably in the same situation. A pastor, an elder, a deacon — among the various church offices, you have to look good at something, and if no one’s watching, you do it half-heartedly; and going out, you’re in a survival-competition society, so at home, at work, at school, you keep trying to show something. And coming home, a parent facing a child does the same — facing them by the standard of whether they study well.
Confessing myself too — I had three children, and I put them all into athletics. So it was always a survival-competition situation, and not just me watching, everyone watching. High or low, good or bad, constantly assessed; coaches watching every day. I lived in that real arena. So the parent is stressed, the child is stressed — that’s how we lived.
But everyone — applying today’s word, a way out kept appearing.
Let’s do the first word. Jesus is the Christ.
In Colossians 1, it says you became children of God through Jesus the Christ. God set you entirely free. It isn’t by some performance that God made you His child. It’s not the standard where God praises or scolds you by results — a child, regardless of what they do or don’t do, has that authority as an inborn, given right. So now, be free with God. Have fellowship with God. God is not one who looks at results, nor one who persecutes you over results — so don’t be deceived by that. Instead, as you keep calling Jesus is the Christ, freedom is felt, and the slave’s habit is shed.
So today is the same. Applying it to myself — as I keep calling Jesus is the Christ, freedom keeps arising inside me, and the rights of a child keep being restored. And what becomes visible is: not rejoicing that I’ve worked hard and accomplished something, but, as in John 19:30, that by Christ’s death I became a child — as that keeps being confirmed, the pressure from performance keeps being shed inside me.
And because of this, I’ve come to see my children that way too. In the old days, facing a child, I said nothing, but in the deepest place inside there was always ah, they have to do well. And it didn’t stop there — a subtle pressure went in. Whether the children sensed it I don’t know; I’m not sure. But though it didn’t show, it was always underneath. Now, though? As I keep calling the name of Jesus the Christ, I see myself breaking what, inside, tries to pressure through performance. So these days, facing my children, and facing Father God in the arena of ministry, I keep seeing myself do it from a place of freedom.
Let me give the final conclusion.
Let’s confess it again. Jesus is the Christ.
When you call the name Jesus is the Christ, the Spirit is with you. When you call it, the power of the Spirit and the greatness of the name Christ keep working inside me, so that my pressure from performance, my bent toward work addiction, my bent toward wanting praise, my bent toward watching for eyes, keep being shed. Then, shed not only inside the church but at home facing my children, and at work too, the pressure of I’d better do this because so-and-so is watching is shed.
And there’s something more important. When that happens, I come to do my own work better. Before, I did it by force, watching for eyes; but now, calling Jesus is the Christ, when that’s shed, the heart God wants to work in me, and my inborn talents, keep getting more activated. The results forced out under compulsion came to only this much — but call Christ, become free, and not only do the results improve, creativity develops more too. I feel it.
So everyone, this week too, keep calling the name of Christ, and keep breaking — with that name — the pressure from performance inside you, and that addiction. May you and I be those in whom God’s power works all the more.
Closing Prayer
Let me pray.
Almighty God, through today’s word, we come to see ourselves caught in an addiction to the pressure of performance, the pressure of achievement, the pressure of grades, unconsciously. This was not given by God but is a culture come down from Genesis 3, the human being’s original picture, and we’ve come to know through today’s word that there’s no escape but the name of Jesus the Christ, no liberation but by that name.
As we live on, let us confess all the more the power and authority and depth of the name of Jesus the Christ, so that we keep escaping the addiction to performance and become free people, and by that freedom become, in the power of God, witnesses who conquer the world.
In the name of Jesus, who is the Christ, we pray. Amen.
Translator’s Note
A few choices, since you asked for it to carry across.
The confession. Jesus is the Christ is kept throughout as a full predicate claim, never collapsed into the name Jesus Christ.
의식주 / “the basics of living.” Carried over from last week as “the basics of living (food, clothing, and shelter),” so the twenty-week series reads continuously.
“Eye-service” (눈가림 / 눈치). Colossians 3:22 itself uses the word often rendered “eye-service” — working only when watched — so I used that term, which lands the pastor’s point about the slaves’ habit precisely.
Epaphras and the Colossian dating. Standard English spelling for 에바브라, and I kept his figures (church planted c. AD 50–52 by Epaphras, not Paul; Colossians written from prison c. AD 60–62).
The friend abroad. The transcript names Switzerland; I kept it generic (“abroad,” “there”) the way the point requires — a mirror for Korean work-addiction, not a comment on a country.
The prosperity guardrail. I preserved the pastor’s own balance — that results and creativity improve as a fruit of freedom, not a reward to chase — so it doesn’t read as a prosperity promise in English.
Register. Live-preaching register throughout — the missed meal, the work-addiction confession, inferiority and guilt as his life’s keyword, the three children in athletics — kept in first person as spoken, since that candor is the substance.
If you’d like, I can align this to the Korean timecodes for an English subtitle file, as we did for earlier weeks.
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