Hallowed be Thy Name

I'd like to begin today by reading from Joshua chapter 5, starting at verse 13. When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man stood before him with his strong sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, Are you for us, or for our adversaries? And he said, No, but as commander of the army of the Lord, I have now come.

And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshipped, and said to him, What does my Lord bid his servant? And the commander of the Lord's army said to Joshua, Put off your shoes from your feet, for the place where you stand. And Joshua did so. No doubt, if this angelic being takes the trouble to come and pay a personal visit to Joshua, he must have some great thing that he wants Joshua to do.

And so Joshua said, What does my Lord bid his servant? And no doubt he's expecting this wonderful, magnificent commander of the Lord's host to say something like, Go in and subdue the land. Go forth and conquer. But no.

All this angel said to Joshua is, You're standing on holy ground. At the beginning of every ministry that is ever going to bear any kind of valid proof, there is this taking off of the shoes, this humbling of oneself, but if Joshua is going to be of any use at all to the purpose of God, Joshua must first learn how to take off his shoes to worship God as holy. And this taking off of the shoes is found at the beginning one way or another of every ministry down to yours and mine.

It happened to Moses. At the turning point of Moses' life, the burning bush, the thing that Moses was told to do first, take off your shoes. Happened to Joshua.

Joshua had been following the Lord for a long time. But this was the turning point, and at this point, before he can move forward into the awesome things that are for him to do, he has to take off his shoes. Happened to Isaiah.

Isaiah is a prophet already, goes up to the temple to pray, has a vision of God. The Lord, high and lifted up. Woe is me, for I am undone.

I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. Figuratively, now, he begins to take off his shoes. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Fear meaning awe, worship, brokenness, repentance. First petition of the Lord's Prayer, and as Jesus teaches us, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. May thy name be kept holy by me.

And we read in Isaiah 57, 15, For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy. I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite, humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart. We wonder why we have such a hard time breaking through the walls of Jericho, conquering the land, bringing down the strongholds of Satan.

Taking in the harvest that God called us to harvest. We wonder why it's so difficult for us to apprehend the presence of God, to get into prayer that's really valid. To somehow hear a living word from God.

And the answer in each instance is that we yet have to learn. We have not learned well enough how to take off our shoes, how to break and bend our stiff necks, how to stop our mouth before the holy. When Peter saw that net coming up loaded with fish, notice he did not walk over to the Lord and slap him on the back and say, Hey, Jesus man, that's... Nor did he say, as we often do, it's valid to praise God and say hallelujah, but at this point he doesn't say hallelujah.

Not there. Peter's on his face. He's trembling.

Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. The people who gave us that understood. We have so much to learn about the holy.

We don't know what it is to be still and tremble before the holy God. What it means to take off our shoes. We think of God as our buddy.

He is never our buddy. He is our friend. And he is close, but he is also high.

The key is this. Up in the tree, trying to get a glimpse of Jesus. What a wonderful thing when Jesus says to him, Zacchaeus, come down.

I must come to your house today. Zacchaeus, for all his sins and all his problems, has a sense of the holy. He knows what to do when he's in the presence of the holy.

He knows how to take off his shoes this man who wasn't religious like the scribes and Pharisees, but immediately he responds by saying, Behold, Lord, half my goods I give to the poor. And if I've defrauded anyone, I restore it fourfold. Next Sunday is Pentecost.

And how many times we, how many of us, have said again and again, Oh, how we need a Pentecost. We need an outpouring of the holy spirit. We need the life of God burning in our hearts and over us.

But what we fail to see so often is that the people who enjoyed that first Pentecost and everyone since who has been served by the spirit of God and moved by the spirit has learned from the Lord. Lesson number one, take off your shoes. These were people, the people in that first Pentecost who had learned from Jesus over a period of three and a half years.

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Hallowed be thy name. He who humbles himself will be exalted and he who exalts himself will be abased.

And they were ready. And so today we stand at the outskirts of Jericho. Jericho is in sight.

We see the walls. It has to come down. We have some conception of the awesome work that is to be done if we're going to really accomplish anything that's valid for the kingdom of God.

But before we can do any of these things, we need to learn well, better than we know now, what it means to take off our shoes when we're standing on holy ground. We take off our shoes, first of all, when Moses met God at the burning bush and was told to take off his shoes, what happened to Moses at that point was that he repented. He turned his life around.

He turned his back on his past. Forty years as a nobleman in Egypt, forty years doing his own thing pretty much in Midian, and now suddenly he has to turn and utterly, radically commit himself to the purposes of the God who speaks to him in that bush. Same thing happens to Joshua.

Joshua has been the understudy of Moses for a long time. Now he's the leader. But before he can move any further on in the purpose of God, he has to learn to repent.

He has to repent of his past, his right to himself, his own way of thinking and doing things, and commit himself utterly as a child to God. Same thing happens to Isaiah in the temple when he has this vision. Woe is me, for I am undone.

I'm a man of unclean lips. I dwell in the midst of a people of un... Sarah takes a burning coal from the fire on the altar, puts it on his mouth and says, Now your sin is forgiven and your guilt is removed. Now Isaiah begins to hear God speak.

And the first thing he hears is, Whom shall I send? Who will go for us? And Isaiah says, Here am I. Send me. That's repentance. It's the turning of his life around, facing the purposes of God and wonderfully committing himself totally to God's purpose.

And you and I are called to do the same thing. We need to understand that repentance is not just something that happened when we got saved. Repentance is something that we desperately need now, all the time.

And to take off our shoes means that we repent in the sense that we turn our lives around. We turn our back on our old ways, our half-committed ways, our idea that yes, I will serve God this far. Yes, I will serve God my way.

Yes, I will serve God if I'm allowed to do it the way... Don't ask me to change. Now we turn around and we put that behind and we say, Here am I. Send me. Do with me whatever you choose, Lord.

That's repentance. Secondly, to take off our shoes means that we humble ourselves. Depart from me, for I'm a sinful man, O Lord, Peter said.

And he doesn't say that standing on his feet. He's on his face. God, be merciful to me, a sinner, says the publican, beating his breast, not even lifting his eyes to heaven.

For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy. I dwell in the high and holy place and also with him who is of a contrite, humble spirit to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the spirit of the contrite. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Again and again and again, Jesus is teaching us that we have to humble ourselves. And the call to us today in this place is to lay aside our adult vanity and become... Take off our shoes means to also lay aside our robes, get down on our knees, gird ourselves in a towel and get ready. Thirdly, to take off our shoes means to commit ourselves to a life of earnest, serious prayer.

The basic sin that trips us all is the sin of pride. And what we fail to see is that this pride in believers manifests itself primarily as prayerlessness. Consider this.

If we have seen what God has done for us, if we have been touched by his healing hand, if we've been blessed, as most of us have been wonderfully blessed, and then go right on and never seriously engage in any kind of genuine prayer life, conversation, discipline with God. This is a way... This is almost blasphemy. This is putting God down.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Prayer. The way we humble ourselves before God and take off our shoes is that we commit ourselves now to begin to pray.

Daily. In a disciplined fashion. There is no spiritual life.

I don't care how well we know the doctrines and how we grasp the theology of the faith, if we don't pray, we don't have life, we're dead. O God, thou art my God, early will I seek thee. My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee.

In a dry and thirsty land where no water is, I'm going to pray, I'm going to talk to you, Lord. One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire. Ask and it shall be given you.

Seek and you shall find. Not that it shall be open to you. How do we ask and seek and not? We pray and pray and pray.

If you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. How do you ask him? To take off our shoes means that we determine before God, committing ourselves before God, no matter how many false starts we've made in the past and how many times we've failed, that from here on in, Lord God, you helping me, I'm going to pray. I mean, daily I'm going to take time, a slice of time, serious time, and pray.

Not to do that means that I'm unwilling to take my shoes off. I won't humble myself enough to do it. Fourthly, to take off our shoes means that we begin to show mercy.

Reading from Luke chapter 19. He entered Jericho and was passing through and there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and rich and he sought to see who Jesus was but could not on account of the crowd because he was of small stature.

So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him for Jesus was to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, make haste and come down for I must stay at your house today. So he made haste and came down and received him joyfully.

And when they saw it, they all murmured, he has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner. And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, behold, Lord, half my goods I give to the poor and if I've defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold. Jesus said to him, and today salvation has come to this house.

Think of this, this man Zacchaeus, tax collector, very, very rich and he's done all kinds of things that are quite unethical. Jesus comes to his house and brings salvation and he takes off his shoes by drawing a line right down through the middle of all his houses, land, bank accounts, everything he has, splitting it in half and pushing this half over here, he's now going to show mercy to people in need in a substantial, material way. Now maybe God isn't asking you and I, you and me, to give away half what we have.

On the other hand, he may be asking us to give away everything we have. But one thing we can be sure of, when we begin to in fact receive the salvation that has been brought to us by Jesus and we start taking off our shoes and hallowing God, we will absolutely begin to show mercy to other people who have needs of whatever kind in some way that's going to cost us money, inconvenience, time. And if we run around praising God and doing all these things and never get down to the business of showing mercy in material ways to other people, I don't care how poor we are or rich we are.

If we don't do that, we're still wearing our shoes. Finally, to take off our shoes means that we make restitution. Lord, half my goods I give to the poor and if I've defrauded anyone, I restore it fourfold.

Zacchaeus knew very well and Jesus knew it that this man had cheated all kinds of people. And he's not going to let that go by. He knows that if there are people who have something against him and he receives this life from God, he's going to have to turn around and start making these things right.

If you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there at the altar and go. First, be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift. And as we approach God today, as we call on his name today, the Spirit of the Lord begins to quicken our memory.

There are people that we have wronged, without exception here, there are people that we've wronged. You know, some of them are already on the other side of death and some of them perhaps are children that we wish we had done more for. Now they're grown and gone.

And some of them are people that have disappeared from our lives. We don't know where they are. We perhaps don't even know.

But there are people and God will take care of that. The ones that we can't reach, we name them before God. If we feel bad about it, we lay it before him and he'll help us.

But there are also people in each of our lives that we have wronged, that we are able to reach with a telephone call, a letter, to make it right. Will you forgive me? Or whatever we have to do to begin to make it right. To take off our shoes means that before the Lord we make up our minds that from now, at this point, we're going to begin to make restitution as we're able and as God shows us.

When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked and behold, a man stood before him with his drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went to him and said to him, Are you for us or for our adversaries? And he said, No, but as commander of the army of the Lord, I have now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshipped and said to him, What does my Lord bid his servant? And the commander of the Lord's army said to Joshua, Put off your shoes from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy.

And Joshua did so. Today, we stand where Joshua stood. We are within sight of the city of Jericho, the Jericho of Joshua, the Jericho of Zacchaeus.

There are walls that need to come down. People need to be set free. A city to be conquered, a land to be taken, a harvest to be brought in, things that God is calling us to do that are absolutely awesome.

But before we can do any of it, we need to learn. Far better than we have learned up to now, to take off our shoes by repenting, by humbling ourselves, by committing ourselves to a life of disciplined prayer, by showing mercy, and by making restitution. May God help us to bring these things to actual acts and deeds and decisions in our practical lives.