The Solid Rock / Edward Mote / William Bradbury
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.
When darkness veils His lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.
His oath, His covenant, His blood
Support me in the whelming flood;
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my hope and stay.
When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh, may I then in Him be found;
Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand,
All other ground is sinking sand.
Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. I read 2 Corinthians 1:12-24:
Now this is our boast: Our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially in our relations with you, in the holiness and sincerity that are from God. We have done so not according to worldly wisdom but according to God’s grace. 13 For we do not write you anything you cannot read or understand. And I hope that, 14 as you have understood us in part, you will come to understand fully that you can boast of us just as we will boast of you in the day of the Lord Jesus.
15 Because I was confident of this, I planned to visit you first so that you might benefit twice. 16 I planned to visit you on my way to Macedonia and to come back to you from Macedonia, and then to have you send me on my way to Judea. 17 When I planned this, did I do it lightly? Or do I make my plans in a worldly manner so that in the same breath I say, “Yes, yes” and “No, no”?
18 But as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not “Yes” and “No.” 19 For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by me and Silas and Timothy, was not “Yes” and “No,” but in him it has always been “Yes.” 20 For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. 21 Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, 22 set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
23 I call God as my witness that it was in order to spare you that I did not return to Corinth. 24 Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, because it is by faith you stand firm.
My Understanding: When we truly take our stand upon the solid Rock, Jesus Christ, these following statements should be true about our lives:
We conduct ourselves in holiness and sincerity from God
When we conduct our lives according to God’s holiness, it means we live lives that are consecrated (set apart) to God – sanctified, righteous, godly, pure, dedicated and faithful in our obedience and service to Him. As well, we conduct ourselves in sincerity, which means we live our lives in full genuineness, honesty, seriousness, earnestness, and authenticity (in truth) in our devotion to God. Yet, we do not do this in our own flesh. Both the holiness and the sincerity of our hearts come from God who dwells within the lives of true believers in Jesus Christ, in the person of the Holy Spirit. It is God’s Holy Spirit, thus, working in us and through us to accomplish his purposes in and through our lives who fills us with all holiness and sincerity that are from God, and not from our flesh nature, as we continually put off the flesh and are yielded to God and to his will for our lives. The song says, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” I “wholly lean on Jesus’ name.” And, that should be true of each one of our lives - that we conduct our lives in such a manner that it is apparent that our hope, our holiness and our sincerity come from God and through what Jesus did for us in dying on the cross for our sins and being raised triumphantly from the grave in conquering death, hell, Satan and sin – the penalty of and control of over our lives.
Not according to worldly wisdom but according to God’s grace
The song says, “When darkness veils His lovely face, I rest on His unchanging grace.” When the storms of our lives often hide God’s face from us to where we don’t sense his presence, we don’t see him working, and/or we don’t feel him involved in our lives, we should not rely upon worldly wisdom that says God is not there, that he is not involved, that he doesn’t care, and/or that we need to take matters into our own hands and to try and solve our own problems through worldly means and wisdom, which is not wise at all. Instead, our anchor, Jesus Christ, who provides us with stability, hope and security, is who we are to hold on to even in those dark times when life just doesn’t make sense to us. We must rest in the knowledge that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever and he never changes. He is there, he is involved in our lives, and he cares very much about us even when the darkness hides his character from us because we have our eyes on the winds and the waves and have taken our eyes off of Jesus. We need to keep our eyes on Jesus.
Not making plans lightly or in a worldly manner
Our plans are our system or method of doing, achieving or accomplishing something we have set out to do, i.e. that we intend to do and/or have arranged to do. When we make plans that we sense are from God, we should not make them lightly, i.e. we should not vacillate back and forth, changing our minds and/or opinions, swaying back and forth from one side to the other saying “yes” and then “no” and then “yes.” This is not to say that we cannot go through this process in deciding what the plan should be, but that if we say we are going to do something, we should do it, unless we have spoken without forethought as to all the implications of that decision. The point of this, I believe, is that we should not make plans without thinking them all the way through and praying them through to make certain they are of God so that we are not ones who sway back and forth on opinion and thus give the impression that we are unsure of even what our plans should be. The song says, “His oath, His covenant, His blood support me in the whelming flood.” Unlike our human plans which sometimes lack true wisdom, direction, forethought, etc., God’s plans for us are never changing. We can always depend upon them for everything in life.
Our message is consistent; unambiguous (certain, definite, unmistakable, explicit)
The song says, “When he shall come with trumpet sound, oh, may I then in him be found; dressed in his righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne.” So much more importantly than whether or not we make our plans lightly or according to worldly methods is whether or not our message (our faith) carries this same theme of wishy-washiness to where people are not sure on what we hope or on what we stand. We should not vacillate back and forth, changing our minds and/or opinions, swaying back and forth from one side to the other saying “yes” and then “no” and then “yes” when it comes to believing in or in sharing the gospel message. Otherwise, people will not take us seriously if we are not confident in what we believe and upon which we rest our hope and security. This scripture says that “No matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ.” He is not going to promise us eternal life and then snatch it away from us saying, “Just kidding!” Yet, we must be sure of our hope and what we believe as evidenced by our lives. Then, if we are truly in Christ Jesus, we have set our hope in him, and we are trusting in Him as our Lord and Savior, we have the assurance of the guarantee of eternal life in heaven with God. That promise has been sealed by the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him. We can depend upon God’s oaths, his covenant with his people and the security that promise of God gives us when all of life around us seems to be falling apart and/or appears to be going straight to hell.
We stand firm in Christ, by faith
The passage of scripture said, “It is by faith you stand firm.” The word “faith” is one of the most misunderstood words ever. Many people see faith as merely an intellectual assent to something, as a religious practice or ritual, or as a casual acknowledgement of something to which they hold some sense of loyalty or devotion. Yet, Biblically speaking, faith encompasses so much more. If we study the New Testament scriptures thoroughly we will see that faith encompasses (includes) both repentance and obedience to God and that even the faith to believe is a gift from God, not of our own works, lest anyone should boast. The Lord gave me an illustration of the meaning of faith the other day in relation to a stop sign. A stop sign means “Stop! Yield the right-of-way. Then, go in safety.” When we believe in Jesus Christ we stop living according to the flesh and the desires of the flesh, i.e. we stop living a sinful lifestyle, we yield the right-of-way to God/Jesus in our lives by making him Lord in place of the control of sin that once enslaved us, and then we go forward in full faith and obedience in the strength, power and might of the Holy Spirit of God living in and through us for his purposes and for his glory. This is the true meaning of faith.
The song says, “On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand; all other ground is sinking sand.” If we are putting our faith, trust and/or hope in anyone or anything besides Jesus Christ, when the storms of life come and the darkness hides God’s character from our eyes, we will sink because we have misplaced faith. Included in this is if we have faith that we have eternal life merely because we prayed a prayer at an altar yet we didn’t believe that it was necessary that it be accompanied by true repentance and obedience to Almighty God. Or, it could be that we are placing our faith in man, a job, our education, our physical abilities or our talents to get us by or to gain approval from God, but those things are all destined to perish and God is not impressed by our intelligence, talents, education level, etc.
What he desires is our obedience, our heart surrender and commitment to him at all levels, and a heart that says “Yes” to Jesus and that never says “No” ever again. If we are truly to take our stand (position; belief; stay; endurance; hold; continuance) on the solid Rock, Jesus Christ, then we must live holy and godly lives that are yielded to God and to his purposes; dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. And, we must walk in the Spirit of God in full obedience and surrender of our wills to the will of the Father. May we, today, examine our hearts before Almighty God and Jesus Christ to see whether or not we are truly in Christ Jesus, so that when the darkness comes, we will be able to stand firm.
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