The grand hymn of faith “My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less,” was written by Edward Mote about 1834. He once shared how he came to write the words: “One morning it came into my mind as I went to labour, to write a hymn on the ‘Gracious Experience of a Christian.’ As I went up Holborn I had the chorus: ‘On Christ the solid rock I stand; all other ground is sinking sand.’ In the day I had four verses complete, and wrote them off.”
Mote then called on a church member whose wife was ill. The husband, accustomed to singing a hymn in his private devotions, was unable to find his hymnbook, so Mote offered the completed four stanzas of his newly written hymn. The dying woman was so taken with the hymn that Mote, after leaving a copy with her, later finished off two more stanzas and had a thousand copies printed in leaflet form.
Verse one: “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness; I dare to make no other claim, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.” The refrain: “On Christ, the solid rock, I stand; all other ground is sinking sand.
In the Gospel lesson from Luke 20:9-19 Jesus tells the parable of the wicked tenants. At the end of the parable Jesus tells us how we can escape the fate of those wicked tenants by quoting Psalm 118: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (Luke 20:17). Then he adds this commentary: “Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush the one on whom it falls” (Luke 20:18).
That’s kind of cryptic, and it really doesn’t sound like good news. But it is! Because it makes an important distinction between those who are broken and those who are crushed. While both hurt, one is permanent, and the other is not.
Jesus is the solid rock. Our faith is solid when it is built on Jesus, his blood and righteousness. But if we desire to be self-sufficient, then the rock becomes a stumbling block. We stumble over Christ; we trip and fall and break apart. Stumbling, falling, and breaking apart aren’t good things. Until we realize how broken we are. We must recognize that our lives are broken, our marriage is broken, our home life is broken, our love life is broken, our attempts at Christian lives are broken, then Christ can put us back together again.
When we finally admit that we are broken, that we have stumbled over Christ and his cross, that we really are the wicked tenants who despise God and the preaching of his Word, then there is hope. Once broken by the cross, we are made whole by the resurrection. God humbles us so he can exalt us. He lowers us so he can raise us up. He breaks us so he can heal us.
Verse two: “When darkness veils his lovely face, I rest on his unchanging grace; in ev’ry high and stormy gale my anchor holds within the veil.”
We cannot always see the glory and love shining from Christ’s face through all the darkness and gloom of this world. Though we at times may be unable to see that grace, it is always there unchanging and unmovable. God’s grace is an anchor that holds us in place through every stormy gale.
Verse three: “His oath, his covenant and blood support me in the raging flood; when ev’ry earthly prop gives way, he then is all my hope and stay.”
The Lord gives us this promise through Isaiah, “When you cross through the waters, I will be with you. When you cross the rivers, they will not sweep you away. When you walk through fire, you will not be burned, and the flame will not set you on fire” (Isaiah 43:2). God’s covenant – his promise proven true and complete in the blood of Christ on the cross is our unmovable support when the floods of physical and spiritual dangers threaten us. When our family abandons us, our culture is decaying, our nation is crumbling, our health is failing – these are only earthly props. They will ultimately give way. Yet God alone is our hope and stay.
Verse four: “When he shall come with trumpet sound, oh, may I then in him be found, clothed in his righteousness alone, faultless to stand before his throne.”
Jesus promises that on the Last Day, “He will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other” (Matthew 24:31). When that angelic trumpet sounds, our hope and confidence is that Christ our King will find us clothed in our white baptismal gowns. We will be clothed in the righteousness Christ gave us at the baptismal font, the bloody righteousness he won on Calvary’s cross, the white-robed righteousness we will wear as God’s saints before his throne.
In his grace, God takes us from wicked tenants who should be kicked out of his vineyard and makes us his white-robed saints who stand before his throne. This only happens because each of us can sing with confidence, “My hope is built on nothing less that Jesus’ blood and righteousness.”