The Solid Rock – Rewind

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope. Psalm 130:5 ESV

Hope – Psalm 130 is a cry to the Lord from the depths of despair. It’s not despair over the external circumstances of life. It’s despair over the chaos of disobedience, of sin at the center of who I am. It is agony over my true state of being – twisted and bent before the holy God. The psalmist tells us that there is hope. Forgiveness is possible. Restoration can come.

But not immediately.

If I want to know the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, I will have to deal with death – my death, the destruction of those things that I could not wait to consume, to possess, the destruction of my unbridled desire to have the world my way, the destruction of any residual belief that I can barter a solution with God. If I am going to experience recovery, I will first have to wait in the grave. That’s why waiting must be at the core of who I am. When I reach this place of surrender, there is no negotiating. I am done, finished, empty, exhausted. There is only one thing left. The promise of YHWH.

The Hebrew word yahal is connected to batah, the verb “to trust.” Over and over the Psalms assert that trust in God will bring praise for His faithfulness. Unlike men, God can be counted on always. His deliverance is guaranteed, even if it is not presently visible. Waiting in the dark only prepares me for the blessing of His light and His word assures me that this light is coming.

Plato has taught us to be suspicious of claims of hope. In the Greek world, hope is merely the projection of desired ends in order that I may survive the current trauma. Hope is not real. It is merely psychologically necessary, a convenient crutch to support my battered psyche until I can return to a more rational state of mind. So when the psalmist declares that I can hope in God’s word, my good Greek training whispers, “Well, if you need to believe this, go ahead, but you know that things don’t turn out that way in the end, do they? You don’t really think God’s goodness will show up, do you? After all, how could the world be in such a mess if what God says is really true?” Ah, the wonders of paradigmatic assumptions. If I listen to all that good training, I will stay in the dark, brooding over the lie of fate.

But God isn’t Greek – and neither are the ones who stand on His word. Throw Plato out with the bath water. To trust God is to remember what He has done in Israel and to wait for His handiwork to show itself again. Hope is not a dream of the future. It is an anchor firmly set in real past events. If I want to know where God is going, I must know where God has been. My hope is in the past, not the future. God did what He said He would do and He will do what He says He has yet to do. I can be confident of His promises because I know what He has already done. And that’s the end of it.

When Edward Mote penned the lyrics to a famous Christian hymn, he forgot that YHWH’s acts with Israel are the real basis of our faith. Without the Great I AM, the mission and accomplishment of Yeshua would be pointless.

My hope is built on nothing less
 than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.


I dare not trust the sweetest frame, 
but wholly trust in Jesus’ Name.

When darkness seems to hide His 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.

Mote was right. I do stand on the righteousness of Yeshua, but not alone, not alone.

Topical Index: hope, yahal, trust, Psalm 130:5