I’ve been exploring some of the very modern worship songs as an old guy 😀. But now, I’ve decided to alternate between very modern hymns, old hymns, and in-between hymns, namely the worship songs from the 60s to the 90s that feature in hymnbooks such as Mission Praise. Today it’s the turn of the old hymns.
Today’s song is O Word of God Incarnate from 1867.
1 O Word of God incarnate,
O Wisdom from on high,
O Truth, unchanged, unchanging,
O Light of our dark sky,
we praise Thee for the radiance
that from the hallowed page,
a lantern to our footsteps,
shines on from age to age.
2 The church from her dear Master
received the gift divine,
and still that light she lifteth
o’er all the earth to shine.
It is the golden casket,
where gems of truth are stored;
it is the heav’n-drawn picture
Of Christ, the living Word.
3 It floateth like a banner
before God’s host unfurled;
it shineth like a beacon
above the darkling world.
It is the chart and compass
that o’er life’s surging sea,
‘mid mists and rocks and quicksands,
still guides, O Christ, to Thee.
4 O make Thy Church, dear Savior,
a lamp of burnished gold,
to bear before the nations
Thy true light as of old.
O teach Thy wand’ring pilgrims
by this, their path to trace,
’til, clouds and darkness ended,
they see Thee face to face.
I am familiar with this one, but I struggle to understand the lyrics 😀. If I sing this in church, I worship God in my heart, but I probably wouldn’t want to distract myself by trying to figure out the words. The very first line reminds me of the first chapter of John’s Gospel.
John 1:1-5 and 14
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth
So, the hymn is about Jesus, but it’s also about delighting in Scripture and the witness of the church. All three can be regarded as lights – communicating God’s truth to the world – but supremely Jesus Himself. So if I’m correct, verse 1 is about Jesus, verses 2 and 3 are about Scripture and verse 4 is about the church.
The line”Truth unchanged, unchanging” is the title of a book by Doctor Martyn Lloyd Jones that I read many years ago. I assume that the title was taken from this hymn.
This hymn encourages me to familiarize myself with hymns at home before I sing them in church. But nowadays, I’d never hear this one in church. I don’t even see many YouTube instances of it.
But here are some:
