HALLOWED BE THY NAME

Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, "Are you for us or for our enemies?" "Neither," he replied, "but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come." Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, "What message does my Lord have for his servant?" The commander of the Lord's army replied, "Take off your sandals, for the place

No doubt if this angelic being takes the trouble to visit Joshua personally, he must have some great thing that he wants Joshua to do.

So Joshua says, "What does my Lord bid his servant?"

Joshua might have been expecting this magnificent commander of the Lord's host to say something like, "Go in and subdue the land!"…"Go forth and conquer!".

But no, all the angel says to Joshua is, "Take off your shoes. You're standing on holy ground."

At the beginning of any ministry that is destined to bear valid fruit, there is the taking-off-of-shoes…humbling of one's self.

If Joshua is going to be of any use to the purpose of God, he must first learn how to take off his shoes, to worship God as holy.

This taking-off-of-shoes is found at the beginning of every ministry down to yours and mine.

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

It happened to Joshua. Joshua had been following the Lord for a long time, but this was the turning point. Before he can move forward and accomplish the awesome things that are his to do, Joshua has to take off his shoes.

It happened to Isaiah. Isaiah, a young prophet, goes up to the temple to pray, and has a vision of God the Lord, high and lifted up.

"Woe is me for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips!"

Figuratively, he begins to take off his shoes.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Fear -- meaning awe, worship, brokenness, repentance.

The first petition of the prayer Jesus teaches us: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name --- may Thy name be kept holy by me.

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 and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite."

Isaiah 57:15

We wonder why we have such a difficult time breaking through the walls of Jericho, conquering the land, bringing down the strongholds of Satan, bringing in the harvest that God called us to reap.

We wonder why it is so difficult to apprehend the presence of God, to get into valid prayer, to hear a living word from God.

In each instance the answer is that we have not learned how to take off our shoes,

how to bend our stiff necks,

how to stop our mouths before the holy.

When Peter saw the net coming up out of the water, loaded with fish, he did not walk over to the Lord, slap him on the back and say, "Hey, Jesus, man that was great! How did ya' do it?"

He didn't even say, "Hallelujah!"

Peter was on his face. He was trembling.

"Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble"

… the people who gave us those words, understood the holy.

We still have much to learn about the holy.

We don't know what 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 above us…

Zacchaeus is up in the tree trying to get a glimpse of Jesus. What a joy for him when Jesus says, "Zacchaeus, come down. I must come to your house today"

Zacchaeus, for all his sins, has a sense of the holy.

He knows what to do when he is in the presence of the holy.

He knows how to take of his shoes —

this man, who was not "religious" like the scribes and the Pharisees--responds by saying, "Behold, Lord, half my goods I give to the poor and if I have defrauded anyone, I restore it fourfold."

Every time Pentecost comes around we hear people say…

"Oh, how we need another Pentecost!"

"We need an outpouring of the Holy Spirit."

"We need the life of God burning in our hearts and over us."

True.

But what we fail to see is that the people who enjoyed that first Pentecost, and every one since who has been stirred by the Spirit of God, has learned Lesson Number One: Take off your shoes.

The people of that first Pentecost had learned from Jesus over the three and 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"… so they were ready.

But are we? Today, we stand on the outskirts of Jericho. We see the walls that have to come down. But before we can bring them down in the Lord's name, we need to learn what it means to be standing on holy ground…with our shoes off!

We take of our shoes by repenting.

When Moses met God at the burning bush and was told to take off his shoes, he repented. He turned his life around. He turned his back on his past.

Forty years as a noble man in Egypt. Forty years of doing his own thing in

the wilderness of Midian. Now suddenly he has to turn his back on all of this, and commit himself to obey the God who speaks to him from that bush.

The same thing happens to Joshua. Joshua, the understudy of Moses, is now the leader. But before he can move forward in the purposes of God, he has to learn to repent. To repent of his past, his right to himself, his own way of doing things --- and commit himself in simple obedience as a child to God.

Or consider Isaiah in the temple. "Woe is me! I am a man undone; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips."

The seraph takes a burning coal from the fire on the altar and puts it to his mouth and says, "Lo, this has touched your lips. 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?"

Isaiah says, "Here am I. Send me."

That's repentance. It's turning his life around and radically committing himself to the purpose of God, as the Lord reveals it to him.

You and I are called to do the same thing. Repentance is not just something that happened when we got saved. Repentance is our way of life, a constant turning away from our own "rights" to God's will.

To take off our shoes means that we turn our lives around — turn our backs on our old ways, on our half-committed ways, our idea that…

"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 I've always been accustomed to. But don't ask me to change."

Now we put all of that behind us and say, "Here am I. Send me. Do with me whatever you choose Lord."

– that's repentance.

To take off our shoes means that we humble ourselves.

"Depart from me for I am a sinful man," Peter says. And he doesn't say it standing on his feet. He's on his face.

"God be merciful to me," says the publican, beating his breast, not even lifting his eyes toward heaven.

Isaiah 57:15

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:3

Again and again Jesus teaches us that we have to humble ourselves. So the call to us today is to lay aside our adult vanity and become trusting, obedient children.

To take off our shoes also means to take off our robes, gird ourselves with a towel, and get down on our knees and get ready to wash feet.

To take off our shoes means to commit ourselves to serious prayer.

The basic sin that trips us all is the sin of pride. And pride, in believers, always manifests itself as prayerlessness.

Consider: if we have seen what God has done for us,

if we have been touched by his healing hand,

if we have been blessed — as most as us have been —

and never seriously engage in a prayer life … a disciplined prayer life, this is blasphemy. This is demeaning God.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.

The way we humble ourselves before God and take off our shoes, is to commit ourselves to pray, daily, in a disciplined fashion.

Without prayer, there is no spiritual life. We are lifeless. We are dead.

Oh, 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... Psalm 63

"I'm going to pray. I'm going to talk to you, Lord…And I'm going to listen."

One thing have I desired of the Lord, one thing will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it will be opened unto you.

How do we ask, seek, and knock? We pray…and pray…and pray.

If you then, 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! Matthew 7:11

How do you ask him for the Spirit? By praying.

To take off our shoes means we determine before God, no matter how many false starts we've made in the past, or how many times we've failed, that, "From here on in, Lord God, with your help, I'm going to pray. Daily, I'm going to take time, serious time, and pray."

Not to do this means I'm unwilling to take my shoes off. I'm unwilling to humble myself.

To take off our shoes means we begin to show mercy.

He entered Jericho and was passing through. And there was a man there 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 in a sycamore tree to see him, for he 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 have defrauded any one of anything, I restore it fourfold." And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house…"

Zacchaeus, a tax collector, is very, very rich. He has done things that are totally unethical. But now Jesus comes to his house and brings salvation. And Zacchaeus takes off his shoes by drawing a line right down the middle of all his houses, lands, bank accounts, everything he has, splitting it in half and pushing this half over here for the poor.

He is going to show mercy to people in need in a substantial, material way.

Maybe God isn't asking you or me to give away half of all we have (on the other hand he may be asking us to give away everything that we have), but one thing we can be sure of is that once we have received God's mercy we are bound to show God's mercy --- with God's generosity --- whatever the cost to us in money, inconvenience, or time!

If we run around praising God and never get down to the business of showing mercy to others in material ways, we are still wearing our fancy shoes.

To take off our shoes means we make restitution.

Lord, half my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone, I restore it fourfold.

Zacchaeus knows, as does Jesus, that he has cheated many people. And he's not going to pretend otherwise. He knows that there are people who have something against him, and he is going to have to go out 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. Matthew 5:23-24

Perhaps, as the Lord begins to quicken our memory while reading these words we become aware that there are people that we have wronged.

Some of them are already on the other side of death and we can't reach them. And some of them are, perhaps, children that we wish we had done more for and now they are grown and gone. And some of them are people who have disappeared from our lives and we don't know where they are; we don't even know their names anymore. God will take care of them.

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, a visit, to make things right.

"Will you forgive me? What can I do to make it right?"

To take off our shoes means that, before the Lord, we commit ourselves to making restitution as we are able, and as God shows us.

Today, we stand where Joshua stood. We are in 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.

Before we can do any of it, we need 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 turn our spiritual vision to practical deeds.