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4 Then said the
LORD unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people
shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove them,
whether they will walk in my law, or no. 5 And it shall
come to pass, that on the sixth day they shall prepare that which
they bring in; and it shall be twice as much as they gather daily. 6 And Moses and
Aaron said unto all the children of Israel, At even, then ye shall know that the
LORD hath brought you out from the land of Egypt. (Exodus
16:4-6)
Like
most very old hymns, this hymn is based squarely on the Holy Word of God. It
reveals a most profound mystery in both the real, present and Hidden Manna of
the Lord. Lyrics are by George Atkins in 1819, and music is Holy Manna by
William Moore in 1825. There are two major concepts of our faith revealed
herein – the spirit of worship, and the nature of God’s Word in the Holy Manna.
6 O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the
LORD our maker. (Psalm 95:6) In some hymnals,
the hymn is titled, Brethren, we have met to Worship.
Holy Manna
Brethren,
we have met to worship and adore the Lord our God;
Will you
pray with all your power, while we try to preach the Word?
All is
vain unless the Spirit of the Holy One comes down;
Brethren,
pray, and holy manna will be showered all around.
Brethren,
see poor sinners round you slumbering on the brink of woe;
Death is
coming, hell is moving, can you bear to let them go?
See our
fathers and our mothers, and our children sinking down;
Brethren,
pray and holy manna will be showered all around.
Sisters,
will you join and help us? Moses’ sister aided him;
Will you
help the trembling mourners who are struggling hard with sin?
Tell
them all about the Savior, tell them that He will be found;
Sisters,
pray, and holy manna will be showered all around.
Is there here a trembling jailer, seeking grace, and filled with
tears?
Is there
here a weeping Mary, pouring forth a flood of tears?
Brethren,
join your cries to help them; sisters, let your prayers abound;
Pray, Oh
pray that holy manna may be scattered all around.
Let us
love our God supremely, let us love each other, too;
Let us
love and pray for sinners, till our God makes all things new.
Then
He’ll call us home to Heaven, at His table we’ll sit down;
Christ
will gird Himself and serve us with sweet manna all around.
Brethren,
we have met to worship and adore the Lord our God; Will you pray with all your
power, while we try to preach the Word? All is vain unless the Spirit of the
Holy One comes down; Brethren, pray, and holy manna will be showered all
around. What is the purpose of worship? Is it to entertain through the
media of modern and sensuous music? Is it to portray the charisma of men and
women? Is it to demonstrate and boast of some contrived gift of the Holy Ghost
of which Heaven is not the author? Or is worship intended to praise the Lord
our God – to lift up His Word and His glory to the exclusion of any such glory
to man? Preaching, too, is not tales of the last football game, or some event
on the local golf course. It is not telling the latest jokes. It must be
centered on the Word of God for any other word preached belongs to man. The
efficacious preaching of God’s Word has forever been to allow His Word to be
the outline and substance (expositional preaching) of any sermon. Any preaching
that is not under the power of the Holy Ghost is vain. If we pray aright, and
the preaching is true and pure, Holy Manna will descend from Heaven. Anything
that comes down from God is Holy! The true Manna of the Christian is Jesus
Christ.
Brethren,
see poor sinners round you slumbering on the brink of woe; Death is coming,
hell is moving, can you bear to let them go? See our fathers and our mothers,
and our children sinking down; Brethren, pray and holy manna will be showered
all around. Observing a burning house filled with trapped souls
would move most of us to take action to save them; yet a much more intense
danger awaits those who are not aware of their sinful state and the means of
grace made available to them in Christ. When I was young, my mother asked me if
I sometimes hated someone. Why, yes, I did hate certain bad fellows at school,
I responded. She told me to imagine those people helpless and dying a tortuous
death. Would I then feel hate toward them? No, the hate vanishes when the
enormity of the destiny that awaits such unrepentant people is realized. Even
on the cross, our Lord pled with the Father, Father, forgive them for they know not what they
do. Do
you ever wonder why our Lord did not forgive them outright Himself? I believe
it was because of the offense, not to Himself, but to the Father in the wanton
murder of His only Begotten Son. It would be the Father’s role to forgive such
brutal sin. Have you ever prayed for the man in the pulpit during his sermon? I
hope so for it calls down the artillery from Heaven by doing so. Why do we
stand idly by while scores and millions are standing with one foot in the world
and the other in Hell?
Sisters,
will you join and help us? Moses’ sister aided him; Will you help the trembling
mourners who are struggling hard with sin? Tell them all about the Savior, tell
them that He will be found; Sisters, pray, and holy manna will be showered all
around. The responsibility to witness to the world is not
divided by gender. Deborah, a prophet and judge in Israel, led the Armies of
Israel, along with Barak, to defeat the Canaanites. She was mightily used of
the Lord. Deborah, in Hebrew by the way, means BEE. The woman of God is as busy
as a BEE and like Deborah. The prayers of a faithful and aged old man, and of a
tiny little girl, are likewise heard in the corridors of Heaven. It is faith
that sustains the prayer without distinction of persons.
Is
there here a trembling jailer, seeking grace, and filled with tears? Is there
here a weeping Mary, pouring forth a flood of tears? Brethren, join your cries
to help them; sisters, let your prayers abound; Pray, Oh pray that holy manna
may be scattered all around. The lost sinner does not know how
to gather Holy Manna. He must be taught from the elementary Word to the fulness
of it. The jailer may become his own prisoner without the interceding Grace of
God. He needs to know. The Word itself is Christ. He is our Bread of Life that
came down from Heaven. He is our Emmanuel. Even good Christian people may be
mourning over loses that are phantoms of the imagination and not real. If Mary
Magdalene knew that the Gardener was Christ, she would never have wept tears of
mourning. She needed to be told! We not only pray for the lost in this world,
but also for those of faith.
Our
prayers establish the environment of action which God is pleased to look upon.
The Manna descends, and we are blessed in ways we may not even have imagined.
The Manna that is Hidden is the sweetest because that is the Manna of Faith. He that hath an ear,
let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh
will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in
the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it. (Rev 2:17) Why a NEW NAME that nobody knows but the receiver? Because it
will be untarnished and no bad report or sinful reputation can be accounted it.
No one will be able to point to you with that name and say, Remember that
terrible sin that old John Doe did when a young man? That old name is gone and
replaced by a pure name. The white stone represented a verdict of innocent. Not
truly innocent, but justified by the blood of Christ. The close and personal
fellowship a Christian has with the Lord and His Word is the Hidden Manna.
Let
us love our God supremely, let us love each other, too; Let us love and pray
for sinners, till our God makes all things new. Then He’ll call us home to
Heaven, at His table we’ll sit down; Christ will gird Himself and serve us with
sweet manna all around. There is no other way to love the Lord except ‘supremely.’ If our
all is not centered on Him, nothing else matters for all things come of Him.
Christ gave us a new commandment. If we keep it, we will be true Christians: 34 A new commandment I
give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love
one another. 35 By this shall all men know that ye are
my disciples, if ye have love one to another. (John
13:34-35) Not a silly love, but a sacrificial love. If we say we love
God and hate a brother or sister, we are lying. The urge that motivates us to
go on foreign soil to witness of Christ is that we already love those who may
be called but do not know of it yet. God will, indeed, make all things new, and
we shall sit in the Banqueting House of our Lord with more Manna than the
Universe can comprehend.
Pass the
Manna, please!
