Naeane Church, Sunday Worship Service, November 1, 2026 The Twenty-Third Sunday After Pentecost

 Naeane Church, Sunday Worship Service, November 1, 2026

 

The Twenty-Third Sunday After Pentecost

 

Title: The Holy Spirit Opens Even a Closed Person's Heart

 

Text: Acts 16:1-14

 

Key verse: Acts 16:14

 

 

On this twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost, I want to preach under the title, The Holy Spirit opens even a closed person's heart.

 

Following on from last week, we are continuing to preach about the Holy Spirit. In the larger flow, we are moving in the direction of asking how we receive the Spirit's help out in the world, outside the church building. Last week I preached on how, even in the scattered places, the church matters, and how we move as an individual church, that is, because the Holy Spirit dwells inside me, that individual church is on the move.

 

But when an individual church is on the move, we meet countless people and circumstances. People above all. And then, that utterly shut person, that stubborn person, that person who seems absolutely impossible to change, does the Holy Spirit simply leave that heart alone, or does he open that heart too? That is the direction of today's message.

 

Today, too, I will preach in the form of answering five questions.

 

 

First. How did I fight the spiritual battle this week?

 

This is a word I speak to you, and it is a word I speak to myself. This week again I kept calling out, Jesus is the Christ. Let us confess it together.

 

Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Christ. I am a child of God. I am a child of God. Every problem, ended. Devil, be gone. Filled with the Holy Spirit. World evangelization.

 

I keep doing this. Not quite with every breath, but continually. In a way this is because, around the time I graduated from university, I was trained for some three or four years in a certain fellowship, and that became a habit I have carried on ever since. I do it even while I eat.

 

The most important thing in our life of faith is to confess that name. **This is not talk. It is training.** The world today is an age in which knowledge is prized, so when we know something, we believe that settles it. But knowledge coming in is only the first step toward knowing something. And the spirit inside me whispers like this. You know all the facts now, so it is all finished. You have it all. It makes me mistake things that way.

 

I lived inside that for decades. When I heard a lot of information, I thought I knew it all, and being a pastor, since I knew the Bible well, inside myself I enthroned myself as god. But the important thing is not knowing. It is training. However much of the world's information one knows, for it to become training on the inside, one must repeat it every single day.

 

**And the hardest thing about repeated training is this. It is tedious.** You keep at it with no idea whether it is working, so it is a battle against dullness. And that dullness, too, must be overcome by calling out, Jesus is the Christ. **When it gets tedious, another spirit comes. Hey, you do not have to do this. It is boring. Repeating this over and over, are you out of your mind? You are not a machine, not a robot, you are a thinking being. Stop. That is how it comes again. And at that stage, once more, you must call, Jesus is the Christ.** So from a certain point on, because I knew this was training, I kept calling out, Jesus is the Christ.

 

Follow after me. Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Christ. **This does not end here. You must keep doing it as well. This is training.**

 

So I keep training. This week I went to a pastors' retreat. When you go, there is a fee, and it is not generous. Even so, Naeane Church always adds a little more, however small, to that fee when they send me, so I am a bit embarrassed. There are those who cannot manage it, while we can manage at least a little.

 

About twenty pastors gather once every year or two and spend two nights and three days together. When you do that, some event stirs up complaining, some situation stirs up conflict, in some situation we pull together, and in some situation there is always someone who throws up an objection. In the old days, when someone threw up an objection, irritation would shoot up inside me. **The direction was already settled, so why is he putting his own opinion forward there, I would think, and inside me the urge rose to strike back, like, what on earth is wrong with that person. In the old days I really did strike back a lot. But this time it settled down a great deal. Again I saw a changed self.**

 

Even in that situation I kept calling, Jesus is the Christ. **Because I cannot change that person. Does that person change because I say something? That is just my own thought, my own emotion.** So I kept praying that the thought would be broken, the thought that, when some situation arose, would even assault that person's dignity, thinking what kind of human is that, and would secretly make him an enemy, even though I never said it out loud.

 

Also, at this retreat there was something I mainly did. I carried this around. I kept a recorder running. What for? These are all pastors I already know, so there is really not much more to talk about. You meet and it is, how have you been, how is the church, all things we already know, so we hardly talk. But before I went, I prayed. What shall I interview this pastor about this time? And what might that pastor interview me about? I began to pray like that. And then, though they were the same people I meet all the time, there was so much I wanted to ask.

 

**Because each person's faith journey up to now is different. What I know is only the most basic surface, and the inside I do not know.** So with one pastor I did an interview over two days, fully six and a half hours. On the second night we started at eight and went until one thirty in the morning, just the two of us. It was not ordinary talk. How do you fight the spiritual battle? In your journey, how do you fight it? When you fight it, how do you do it concretely? When that thought comes, how exactly do you handle it? I went right down the line like that.

 

And then that pastor said this. He had never talked this deeply before, and had never looked this far into what was inside himself. As I listened, I felt, ah, this man too, though his life's journey is different, is fighting the spiritual battle fiercely. He is living fiercely.

 

So I kept carrying this around. And some pastors said, another interview? I went around until they were sick of it. **Because once I actually did the interviews, my eyes were opened, and I could see, ah, this one is dealing with this, that one is dealing with that.** And doing the interviews this time, I felt something more. Ah, next time another topic with that person will come up.

 

Why was this possible? Because in my heart, even in those situations, I kept fighting the spiritual battle, and so I cannot remember anything he did to hurt my feelings yesterday. Even when he stubbornly pushed his own opinion in this group before, once the moment passes it is forgotten. Why? Because I keep my own heart. **The most important thing is this. However much is happening outside, and however much I am talking back and forth in the moment, what matters is breaking the thought that comes in through all of it and splits me apart from that person.**

 

Let us confess again. Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Christ.

 

But friends, did I win every battle this week? No. **It is not that I won them all. It is that even when I lost, I could stand right back up, and that the time it takes to recover, even after losing, keeps growing shorter and shorter.**

 

There is one thing I felt truly ashamed of this week. I have money I borrowed from my sister-in-law. Back in my school days it was not I who borrowed it, it was my wife, but it was borrowed because of me. So for decades now I have hardly paid it back. I plainly admit to myself that I have been dragging my feet inside. Whenever money came, I always paid it back last, and only a little at a time. But this week, through a certain occasion, that whole matter came to a head.

 

My wife said, why do you not pay on the day you are supposed to, and as she spoke, something came surging up inside me. **It came up. It had come up before too. But before, the sign was obvious, so some word went straight out. This time, though, something was rising, and I knew it. Ah, right now I have to fight the spiritual battle, and I held it fast.** So no word came out. If a word had come out, surely something would have burst out. You know what I mean. I know what is inside me.

 

But it really was astonishing. As I listened, only this much anger came out. It was trying to burst out, but because I kept holding it in the name, Jesus is the Christ, with peace underneath at the very bottom of my heart, it rose a little and then stopped. I was watching myself closely. My face did pucker a bit, but I did not let it show. I was barely looking at my wife, so by feeling she probably knew, ah, he is a little angry. But just how angry, she probably did not really know. I know myself, though, and I saw, ah, I am keeping myself well. So I thought, this is amazing.

 

That was the most shocking thing to me this week. In the old days it would have burst out, and then something would happen, and then the next thing would happen. **People always end up facing their real selves, their petty selves. As I stand here and keep calling, Jesus is the Christ, you may think, ah, that pastor has it all together now. But that is a mistaken impression. Inside I feel it all the more keenly, so I am fighting all the more fiercely, all the more for real.** So it is truly tiring, truly hard. It seems this will go on until I die. So I also see myself living a tiring life.

 

Yet because this keeps getting peeled away, I see a freer self. What sits quietly, secretly inside, comes bursting out at some point, and as I heal it again and resolve it again in the name, Jesus is the Christ, the deeper and deeper I go, the more I feel freedom. This is a bit like fishing for a compliment, but the other day my wife dragged me to a skin care clinic and I got a lot of injections, and the consultant said this. Your age is such and such, but why are both of you so peaceful in the face? That is not about the shape of the face. It is that the eyes are at peace and the heart can be felt. So I felt, ah, I am becoming a bit of a witness.

 

 

Second. How much more deeply did I come to know Genesis 3:15 this week?

 

We human beings have a fundamental problem. It is there precisely because we are human. The first ancestor carried that problem, and it has come straight down to us. What is it? Satan, who had been outside. The darkness, which had been outside. The emptiness, which had been outside. That godlike mind that betrays God and makes itself equal to God, which had been outside. All of it came inside. It came into the body, came into the thoughts, came into the genes, and does not leave. That is the problem.

 

So regardless of how I have acted, from birth I am already held by sin and death and can only face God's judgment. Living in this world, I am under the rule of Satan, and apart from the common grace God shows in nature, I am in a condition where I can receive no help. What comes out from inside is the constant drive to make myself god, so I become god and the other person becomes god too, and there is nothing but collision, nothing but conflict. And through that, demons come in all the more. This is the human condition, and this is the root problem.

 

Why does it come out? The source is in Genesis 3:1 through 5. So because of it, as I said, the human being can only die, and dying, can only be judged, and that eternal judgment passes down to the descendants as it is, and history flows on. This is the panorama of humanity.

 

So God did not give something to solve just a few small sins. He gave a name that can solve this root problem of humanity and change us into children of God from the root. It is the one solution God gave. Let us live it out, following after me.

 

Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Christ.

 

In Genesis 3:15 God gave, not yet the name Jesus, but the name the Christ. That is the one and only name, and so the Old Testament is about nothing else. **The way opens to the one who knows the depth and height and breadth of that name and calls on it.** When I quietly applied this myself, I found that knowing is only the basics. It is only one step in. As I kept calling and calling, what happened? My eyes opened a little at a time. The countless things I had known about the Bible now began, little by little, to be interpreted. And freedom was felt in my heart.

 

From Genesis 3:15 onward, all those who went forward were people who called on the name of the Christ. So that is what matters most in the Bible, and this week too became a time of knowing it more deeply.

 

 

Third. Interpret today's text, Acts 16, on the basis of Genesis 3:15.

 

The Bible says that in Genesis 1 and 2 the human being was made to live together with God. But in chapter 3 he fell away from God, made himself god, and so Satan came inside, and from then on he became a child of Satan, and it flows down like this. But because God himself made the human being, he gave a way to save that human being, and it is Genesis 3:15.

 

So the Old Testament keeps saying, call on the name of the Christ, but that Christ had not yet come. Then at last, in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the Christ came. His name is Jesus. He resolved on the cross every problem that kept us from meeting God, rose again on the third day, remained for forty days, and then went up to the right hand of God, and the one he sent is who? The Holy Spirit. Follow after me. Filled with the Holy Spirit. Filled with the Holy Spirit. Filled with the Holy Spirit.

 

The present age is the age of the Holy Spirit. The Christ who was bodily present in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is the one who, even now, from the right hand of God, comes into us by the Holy Spirit and works. So from Acts 2 on, this Spirit came into the hearts of the disciples and spread out. Look at chapters 6, 7 and 8, and the gospel that stayed in Jerusalem spreads to Samaria, later to Antioch, and on into the whole world. That is the flow of the whole Book of Acts, and in today's text, chapter 16, who appears? A man named Paul. **In terms of that time, it is around AD 49 to 50.**

 

Where did Paul go? Having preached in Asia, he crosses over into Europe, and that is Acts 16. Crossing into Europe, he goes into a region called Philippi, and after searching and searching, whom does he find? A person named Lydia. By preaching the gospel to her, the church founded there is the first church in Europe, the church at Philippi. That is what appears in today's text. This is the overall content.

 

 

Fourth. The part of today's text I most want to interpret in depth.

 

This is what I want to convey. **Acts is somewhat different in character from the letters that run from Romans to just before Revelation. Acts is a book of history, so it records how the gospel was historically spread, placing one man, Paul, at the center as it moves out into the world. Then from Romans to just before Revelation, the letters record how the individual churches, within that spreading, grew.**

 

But what I want to explain today is the heart of Paul the evangelist. Whom has Paul now met? He has met Lydia. Yet the process he passed through to meet that one woman, Lydia, is so complicated. **It is told in detail in the Bible. He passed through Phrygia and Galatia, and because the Holy Spirit forbade him to preach the word in Asia, he passed through Mysia and down to Troas, and there, after seeing the vision of the man of Macedonia, he passed through Samothrace, passed through Neapolis, and arrived at Philippi.** To meet one person, Lydia, he came through a great many regions. In terms of time it was a few days, but in those few days he came through countless cities.

 

And there is something remarkable. Having come through all that to the Philippi region, even there, there was a long process before he met Lydia. **At that time about ten thousand people lived in Philippi, and the period is around AD 49 to 50.** Paul's usual way of evangelizing was this. Since he was a Jew, he went first to the Jewish quarter, and the first place he went was the synagogue, which in today's terms is like a church building. But **in Philippi there was no synagogue. More importantly, there were hardly any Jews. That region was mostly retired Roman soldiers farming the land, with a considerable number of slaves as well.** There were almost none of his own people. There was no place of prayer either. And Paul usually evangelized mainly among men, but there were hardly any men there either. The conditions themselves were all blocked.

 

**In mathematical terms, condition, condition, condition, all blocked.** So Paul came to his lodging in Philippi and wandered for several days. Each day, each moment is such precious time, yet he came all the way to Philippi and nothing happened. No synagogue, no place of prayer, no men.

 

Then the Sabbath came. So he went outside the city gate, looking for whether there was a place of prayer. **This is because, when there were many people, the Jews would build a synagogue, but when there were only one or two, on the Sabbath they would go out to the riverside, wash themselves in a rite of purification, and pray.** So Paul, hoping even one or two might be there, went out to the place of prayer by the river, and there a small number of Jews were present. Yet remarkably, as he preached the word to those Jews, they heard but no one responded. **Rather, there was one who was not a Jew but a Gentile woman who feared God, and it was that one person he met. From that one person, the church begins.**

 

So, I have explained it roughly, but what is more important is Paul's heart. **Into Paul's heart, bad conditions kept pressing in.** Before coming to Philippi he came through Phrygia, Galatia, Mysia, Troas, Samothrace, Neapolis. Not here, not there, and as those blocking conditions pressed into his heart, a spirit rises. **Hey, here too is blocked, so you have nowhere to evangelize. Go back. There is nowhere left to evangelize. It comes like this.** If Paul had taken that in just as it came, the thought would have surged over him, ah, there is nowhere to evangelize, what am I to do, must I go back?

 

He arrives in Philippi, and for days nothing happens, and search as he might, there are no Jews. Then again it presses in. **Hey, there is nowhere to evangelize here. No Jews, no synagogue, no men. Just a few women and a handful of Jews. There is not one person here who would listen to you and believe that Jesus is the Christ.** It presses in like this.

 

Yet in those countless conditions where nothing worked, Paul kept his own heart. **Is it not remarkable? If Paul had not kept his own heart, he would not have found Lydia.** Had he kept holding on to the conditions that would not work, then even when God opened his eyes and let him meet Lydia, his face would have been sour. Worry and anxiety and frustration and depression would have been soaked into it. Then would Lydia's heart have opened? **In the Bible, what always matters is the witness.** Paul was keeping his own heart so that, even amid countless conditions where nothing worked, he could stand as a witness.

 

So Paul is not fighting the outer field. **Outside, every condition is a no, but in the end the problem is not the conditions that will not work. It is the thing that comes inside and seizes hold of his whole heart, and that is what he fights.** So it is not that he won by positive thinking, nor that he evangelized hard and it worked. Because he kept his heart in Jesus is the Christ, he came to preach out of peace. Let us follow after me once. Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Christ.

 

 

Fifth. How shall I apply today's Word?

 

Let me give my testimony. When I first called on the name, Jesus is the Christ, the very first stage was a problem I had carried for a long time. For decades, guilt and inferiority were my biggest problem. In a way I was completely seized by a spirit of guilt and completely seized by a spirit of inferiority. Whatever I tried to do, you are a sinner, you cannot do it, you are a sinner, it just came, and from childhood, from childhood it was always there, and seeing another pastor or something, inferiority, hey, you cannot measure up to that, and it made me wretched. For decades I was steeped in it.

 

But through Jesus is the Christ, I pushed it out. It is not that I kept pushing to kill that spirit. As I kept pushing it out, that enormous thing kept shrinking, until at some point it became tiny. **Now I hardly ever feel guilt. Just as a person completely addicted to drugs reaches a state where, even seeing the drug, the desire not to take it rises inside, I came to the same state.** Seeing the church, seeing another pastor, or anything that might stir guilt, my heart does not react. I have changed.

 

But as the problem I had carried for so long was resolved, next, what used to come from outside, in conversations with people, with my spouse, with my children, small things that used to be no problem began to show up as problems. **It was not that the person was the problem. I was the problem. Through that person's words I was affected, and I was criticizing that person. I was only not saying it.** I am good at holding back, and having studied counseling, I do not put it into words. When someone says something unpleasant, or a child says something unpleasant, I say, ah, I see, while inside I think, that person is speaking in that manner. But the bad feeling inside, at least in part, was there. It kept being there.

 

But as I kept at it, deciding I must keep my own heart in that too, even that became a spiritual battle. **More importantly, what matters most for a pastor is being an evangelist.** In the old days I would go out and try hard, but honestly it did not work. I did it for decades and it did not work. Then at some point, I decided that even the conditions coming at me from outside that would not work, I must meet by calling, Jesus is the Christ, and keeping my own heart. **It is not that the person is the problem, nor that I am trying to change that person. I must change my own heart, and I kept keeping it.** And then, whatever situation came, I saw myself keeping my own heart again and again. So I thought, well, this really is something.

 

Perhaps today's Word can be applied like this. You too, as you keep calling the name, Jesus is the Christ, are still at war with what has long been inside you, and will be for a while. But as that stage passes little by little, when someone says something you are still affected, are you not? When your spouse says one word it feels bad, when a child says one word something rises inside. **But that is not the child's problem. Not the spouse's problem. Not the world's problem. It is my problem.** Through that action, that spirit puts a question to me. Hey, he is acting like that, so should you not change him?

 

**I cannot even change myself, so how can I change a person? I cannot change myself, so how can I change the world's circumstances? The idea that if I nag, he will change, that is the voice of a demon. The idea that if I say one word I can change that person, that is me becoming god.** So, friends, from then on I gave up changing people. I cannot even change myself, so why would I change a person? The only thing is, the way that person's words affect me so that I criticize him, and turn myself strange, and get stirred up, that I must change, and so I keep my own heart. So however much is said, I pray that I will not be affected.

 

Follow after me. Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Christ.

 

**We have the name, Jesus is the Christ, by which we can actively change our own hearts, actively overturn them, actively seek God's guidance. It is not that things just change on their own while you sit still. The idea that it will change if you just wait, that too is the voice of a demon.** This week too, however outer situations unfold, however your child speaks, keep yourself. **Even a two-year-old I cannot change. I can get him to say yes with a few words, but an elementary schooler I already cannot change. Change yourself. Keep yourself. Then, in the midst of peace showing through, you can have influence.**

 

 

Closing Prayer

 

Holding on to the Word, let me pray.

 

However much the world's circumstances are at their worst, however unresolved they stay, however my home and my spouse and my children do not change, I make countless efforts to change them, but I have come to know that the effort itself is my own stubborn conviction and the voice of Satan.

 

Above all, however much the outer situation is at its worst, it will come into my heart and churn it up and drive me into countless wicked actions, but let me call the one name by which I can keep my heart within, Jesus is the Christ, and so overcome and win and be made a witness.

 

At this time we bring our offering. Let this offering be used wholly upon the gospel of the Lord. Almighty God, let us first know the height and depth of the name, Jesus is the Christ, and set us free from the thought and the ideology that tries to change the outer circumstances and events and encounters, and whatever situation unfolds and whatever darkness there is, let us call that one name first, so that a true and continual peace may be kept in my heart.

 

Now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the abundant love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with all the Lord's servants who long to hold on to the Word and receive an answer, and with the saints of Naeane Church, and with all who worship online at this time, from now and forevermore. Amen.

 

 

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Translator's Note

 

This is a live, spoken sermon, and the English keeps that register: the direct address, the call-and-response confessions, the self-correcting asides, the preacher narrating his own week.

 

Jesus is the Christ. Kept throughout as a full predicate claim, never shortened to the name Jesus Christ. In this church's theology the sentence itself is the confession and the weapon against intruding thoughts. The confession line Filled with the Holy Spirit and World evangelization are the fixed six-phrase 나의 위치, the believer's position, kept in the order the congregation recites them.

 

Inside and outside. The sermon leans on a spatial contrast between the outside, where sin and Satan originally stood, and the inside, the human heart they have now entered. The plain in here and out there is kept rather than smoothed into abstraction, because the argument of Genesis 3:1 through 5 turns on that movement.

 

The demon's voice, the spirit that whispers. The preacher personifies intruding thoughts as a 영, a spirit, that speaks. Rendered as a spirit rises, it comes, it presses in, keeping the thoughts as a voice rather than flattening them into feelings.

 

Keeping one's heart. The recurring 내 마음을 지킨다 is kept literally as keep my own heart, since the whole sermon turns on it, guarding the inner self rather than trying to change people or circumstances outside.

 

Cultural and biblical specifics kept with light glosses. The retreat is a pastors' gathering of a regional fellowship. The riverside place of prayer reflects the Jewish practice, which the preacher explains, of meeting by water for the Sabbath where there were too few people for a synagogue. The place names on Paul's route, Phrygia, Galatia, Mysia, Troas, Samothrace, Neapolis, Philippi, follow the Acts 16 itinerary, and the dating of about AD 49 to 50 and the population of about ten thousand are the preacher's own figures. Lydia is named as in the text. The sister-in-law and the skin-care clinic are kept as the preacher told them.

 

Bold passages. The bolded sentences match the Korean blog version, where the spoken transcript was lightly firmed up for the written text, chiefly the training-and-tedium battle, the retreat interviews, the testimony about the borrowed money, the blocked conditions at Philippi and Paul fighting his own heart rather than the outer field, and the closing application that one cannot change others, only keep oneself.