My Hope Is Built On Nothing Less

8.3.2010

John 5.45b Moses, on whom you have set your hope. ESV

A person could take a valuable diamond and glue it to a plastic finger ring – to which we all might ask, ‘Have you lost your mind!?’ To take something valuable and place it on something worthless shows little respect or understanding of the valuable; and misplaced value in the worthless.

Hope is an intangible but valuable thing and all of us hope for something. Our current president ran his campaign on the value of hope. He hopes for a political system to cure all that is wrong in our country – as he sees it. We all hope for something. The Jews hoped that by following the rules they would gain right standing with God. The problem was their rule-keeping oppressed people and God doesn’t care for that at all. Jesus pointed out the error of placing their hope on a faulty setting. That’s when thing began to get interesting.

I have long placed my hope on cultural settings because I was taught to do that. I was taught early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. What I didn’t realize was that not only can my settings be faulty, but so can my hope. Politics don’t bring hope and neither does my culture – unless my culture is godliness.

Lately, in this unstable economy, culture, and turbulent political scene, I am learning this lesson:

My hope is built on nothing less

Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.

I dare not trust the sweetest frame,

But wholly lean on Jesus’ Name.

On Christ the Solid Rock I stand

All other ground is sinking sand

All other ground is sinking sand.*

Father God,

Thank You for true hope based on Christ – priceless and eternal; amen.

* Edward Mote - circa 1834