‘Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God.’

Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help; whose hope is in the Lord his God.

The happy man. The happy woman. The happy person. That’s my title tonight: the happy man or woman – if you prefer, the happy person. Now there are three key words I want you to notice. Three key words in verse five – they are very simple words; we use them every day and they are all before us. Verse 5: ‘happy’ is the first one; the second word is the word ‘help’ and the third word is the word ‘hope’. Three words: happy, help, and hope. And this is, I believe, every man’s need. Without exception, every one of us need to be happy or wishes to be happy. Every one of us needs help – we need help from God of course. But we need also to have hope – a man without hope is a dead man, a miserable man.

But you see, we don’t have to make it up. We don’t have to look here and there seeking for happiness, seeking for help, seeking for hope. God provides these elements to our souls; he provides them – and certainly your first reaction here in hearing these things, you will say: certainly we live in an unhappy world. We don’t see much happiness in our world do we? We don’t see much help in this world, but we don’t see also much hope.

Some people believe it is their right to be happy. When you listen to some people: ‘I just want to be happy, that’s all I want; don’t talk to me about God; don’t talk to me about anything in my life; I want to be happy.’ You want to be happy – but how to be happy? So these are really tremendous words: happiness, help and hope. Where will they come from? What does it take to make a man or a woman happy in this world?