Happy man you are, who has the God of Jacob for his help! Happy means blessed. Blessed man now and blessed from eternity and blessed to eternity. Blessed in all things. Blessed always. He is blessed in all that befalls him in this life; he is blessed in every step of his pilgrim’s journey here below. He is blessed in sickness and in health, in riches and in poverty, and in fruitful years and in barren. He is blessed now, and he is blessed forever in heaven.

He alone is blessed. All who have the God of Jacob for their help are blessed. They are blessed in all. None who do not have the God of Jacob for their help—none who are strangers from him and aliens from his covenant, none who are his haters or his enemies—are blessed. They are cursed. That is the implied word of the text. Cursed and miserable are all who do not have the God of Jacob for their help. No matter how they may smile and no matter how their prosperity may blossom in the eyes of men, they are not blessed but are cursed of Jehovah, the living God.

Blessed are all who have the God of Jacob for their help.

He who has the God of Jacob for his help is a truly happy man.

The God of Jacob is Jehovah.

Who is Jehovah? He made heaven, earth, the sea, and all that therein is. He keeps truth forever. He executes judgment for the oppressed. He gives food to the hungry. He loosens the prisoners. He opens the eyes of the blind. He raises those who are bowed down. Jehovah loves the righteous! Jehovah preserves the strangers and relieves the fatherless and widows. He turns the way of the wicked upside down.

Who is a God like Jehovah? Who is so mighty and so righteous and so near unto his people? 

Do not put your trust in princes! Who are they? Their breath is in their nostrils, and in a moment their breath goes out of them, they return to the earth, and their very thoughts perish.

But the thoughts of Jehovah are eternal, as he is eternal. He does all his pleasure.

Who was Jacob? He was one of the twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah. Isaac was the son of Abraham and Sarah by promise. Rebekah was the granddaughter of Nahor, the brother of Abraham, one of the sons of Terah. Jacob was the younger and weaker of the two boys. Esau was the older and stronger. Jacob was by nature essentially no different from Esau. Jacob came from the same parents. He was conceived in the same womb. He was born into the same household. He was circumcised with the same circumcision. And still more, he was the less desirable inasmuch as he was younger and weaker. Jacob and Esau, being born of Isaac and Rebekah, were conceived and born dead in trespasses and sins. They were conceived and born outside the kingdom and covenant of God. They were conceived and born subject to all miseries and to condemnation itself. They were conceived and born subject to the guilt of Adam’s original sin.

Because they were guilty for Adam’s original sin, they were conceived and born with the punishment that Adam’s sin deserved, which is death. Physically, they were born dying. Spiritually, they were dead in trespasses and sins. Of themselves and in themselves, they were liable to eternal condemnation. Jacob was essentially no different from his brother. Jacob was a sinner. He was by nature unworthy of the least of all God’s mercies and grace.

Jacob showed this sinful nature throughout his life. Oh, you say, “God regenerated him,” and indeed that is true. God touched Jacob’s heart with grace. God changed that heart and put his love in that heart, so that Jacob loved God. Jacob loved God, while his brother Esau did not and was earthly, carnal, sensual, and devilish.

Yet you cannot say that Jacob was perfect in any way. Though by faith he loved and believed God’s promise to him, for a large portion of Jacob’s life—almost to the very end—he attempted to fight for God’s promise in his own strength and not by faith. Jacob tricked his father Isaac with the help of his mother. Then when Jacob’s trick earned him the rage of his brother, Jacob had to run away to his uncle Laban. There in Haran, when Laban unjustly changed Jacob’s wages ten times, Jacob tried every subterfuge and superstition to increase the number of his cattle. While in Haran, he took two wives and the two servant women of his wives, so that he had four mothers of his children. The lovely Leah he spurned, and the prickly Rachel he loved. He was by his foolishness the source of endless trouble, strife, discontent, rivalry, jealousy, and sin in his marriages and in his houses. He turned a blind eye to Rachel’s idolatry and to Reuben’s adultery and gave only the mildest rebuke to the treachery of his sons in Canaan. He forgot his vow to God at Bethel. By Jacob’s favoritism he fired the jealousy of his sons against Joseph.

This saint and patriarch was a sinner. That is what the Bible clearly reveals in exhausting detail. And that is what God had to teach Jacob at Peniel when the angel of Jehovah—his savior—rushed on Jacob in the middle of the night and wrestled with him in sweat and grime on the dusty banks of the creek. Jacob did not attain and retain the promise of God in his own strength and by his own ingenuity and might. Indeed, by all his sins he should have forfeited God’s covenant promise to him, and by those same sins he deserved only condemnation. Jacob himself confessed at Peniel, “I am not worthy of the least of thy mercies!”

Those who have the God of Jacob for their help are like Jacob, who had God as his help. As God was Jacob’s God, so God is their God. They are Jacob, walking in today’s world as Jacob walked in the days of the patriarchs. They are his spiritual children, the seed of Jacob.

God was the God of Jacob.

Now let me tell you how wonderful and gracious that name, God of Jacob, is. 

If parents have a son or a daughter who does embarrassing and sinful things—becomes pregnant before marriage or gets caught breaking the law—the parents are ashamed. If the evening news broadcasts the names of the parents along with their child after he or she has committed a crime, they are humiliated. They do not want their names associated with crime or sin. But God—before the whole world, on the pages of sacred scripture, and to all eternity—will have himself known as the God of Jacob. That is his name. The God of Jacob.

The God of Jacob, then, is God. Jacob has as his God the God of heaven and earth, who reveals himself in the psalm as Jehovah. Jacob has Jehovah, the i am that i am, as his God. God is the same in all the instant and constant fullness of his divine being from eternity to eternity. He is the covenant God in himself. He is the triune God. He is the living God. He alone is good and the overflowing fountain of all good. He is absolutely independent, having need of no one and nothing to make himself happy, full, or blessed. He is blessedness itself, and he is the endless and eternal fount of all blessings. The fountain of eternal life is found alone in him.

That God is Jacob’s God. He is Jacob’s God in the sense that God is for Jacob and never against him. God possesses Jacob as his beloved, and Jacob possesses God as his God. He is for Jacob for his eternal salvation, and God is never against Jacob to his eternal condemnation.

Jehovah has said to Jacob, “I am your God, and you are mine.” That is a life-changing word. That word of God is powerful to give what it speaks. That word of God is not dependent on the one to whom it is spoken, but that word of God lays hold on that one and changes him in the very depth of his being from being a God-denier into being a God-lover. That word lays hold on the object of God’s delight and translates him out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. That word draws that one into the presence of and fellowship with God. That word spoken to one reveals to him the grace and the mercy of God, shows to him God’s covenant of friendship and fellowship, and works all things for that one’s eternal glory. “I am your God” is the most blessed word in the world. That word makes God that person’s inheritance, and Jehovah becomes his portion.

And corresponding to “I am your God” is the second part: “You are my people.” That word makes that people God’s inheritance, his precious possession in the world.

The God of Jacob is the God of infinite power. He made the heaven and the earth by the word of his power and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. He gives to every creature—from the angels, to the sun and moon and stars, to all the animals and birds and fish—their being, shape, and offices to serve him. He provides for all and gives them their meat in due season. All men live, move, and have their being in him. Without him and apart from his will, no creature can so much as move, and apart from him they cease to exist. Jehovah is Jacob’s in infinite power, so that nothing is impossible for the Lord in his will to bless Jacob. Is anything too hard for the Lord?

Jehovah, who is sovereign over all, is Jacob’s. Nothing—in heaven above, on the earth beneath, or under the earth—happens apart from Jehovah’s will. All things are decreed by him. And all things happen as he unfolds that decree in his sovereign control. Especially is he sovereign over the eternal destinies of men. What did God say to Rebekah when the twins were not yet born and had done neither good nor evil? “The elder shall serve the younger.”

He needed to say nothing more. Rebekah understood perfectly well what God had said. That was God’s word to Rebekah that he had chosen Jacob and rejected Esau. Jacob was God’s beloved. Esau was hated. God said that. God said that about twin boys. God made that distinction eternally. God revealed in that his goodness and severity. He said that in his great love for Jacob. Eternally, in love he desired and delighted in Jacob, and in love God appointed Jacob to grace, mercy, and salvation. Eternally, God decreed to make a covenant with Jacob and to incorporate him into that covenant in Christ.

Jehovah is the God of Jacob in God’s great grace. Grace is the eternal favor of God. Grace is the power of God to save his beloved people. In grace he is Jacob’s God. The God of Jacob is the God of sovereign election and reprobation; he is the God of unmerited grace; he is the God of an unfailing and unconditional promise of salvation to his people—a promise that does not depend in any sense at all on the recipient of that promise. That promise depends on God alone; and in the realization of that promise by grace, God gives all that he has promised.

Jehovah is the God of Jacob in a covenant of grace, reconciliation, and friendship. God possesses Jacob in love, and Jacob has God as his inheritance, so that all the blessedness, goodness, grace, power, sovereignty, mercy, and life of God are Jacob’s by promise. God is Jacob’s.

And so, possessing God, Jacob has God for his help.

Oh, how Jacob needed a help! Even from a physical viewpoint, he stood as the weaker over against his stronger brother, the younger over against the older. Even deeper, he stood as the spiritual over against the carnal, the elect over against the reprobate, the lover of God over against his hater. Jacob—and all like him—existed in the midst of a sinful, sin-cursed, and dark world that hated God and thus hated all who were of God’s party in the world, that hated all his friends and his servants. Besides, Jacob needed a help over against his own sins, both his original sin and his own actual sin. He existed in the world in his guilt because he broke the commandments of God. He existed in the world with his transgressions, his sins, and his violations of the law of God.

Still more, Jacob stood in the world powerless to bring the promise of God. The promise of God is the promise of salvation from sin and life with God in his covenant now and in eternity. But there was in Jacob no power at all to bring that promise. He could not pay for his sins, but he daily increased his guilt. He could not preserve himself in his life but would have been swallowed up by his enemies, a fact that was driven home to him when Esau came to meet him with four hundred armed men. Of all the things that Jacob could not do to realize the promise, he could not bring himself to heaven and realize the new, heavenly, and eternal life with God. Jacob could not because he could not raise the dead. To bring God’s promise, to realize that promise, and to bestow the blessings of that promise, one must be able to raise the dead; to overcome death; to put an end to death; and to raise man and, indeed, the whole creation above the power of sin and death. So it was for Jacob, and so it is for all who are the seed of Jacob.

And that is the reason there is no power and thus no help in the sons of men either, even if they are princes. That is the contrast. You have the God of Jacob for your help, or you have princes. Princes refer to the very best and most powerful of men. But there is no help in princes. Though they have great riches in this life; though they have great power, wisdom, or learning in this life, there is no help in them. Princes cannot raise the dead. Indeed, they themselves are subject to death and go the way of all men, and in a day their very names perish. Trust not in princes or in the sons of men.

The God of Jacob alone is help. And to have Jacob’s God as your God is to have Jacob’s God as your help. That means to have an intimate covenant friend. A help is a friend. He is the one in whom you trust and to whom you tell all your secrets. God is the God of Jacob and of all who are the seed of Jacob as their intimate covenant friend. He draws them near to himself, and he draws near to them. They draw near to him, and he draws near to them. And because he is their help and because he is God, he is also their mighty and willing savior. In all their troubles and afflictions, from all their sins and miseries, in all their wretchedness and helplessness, he shows himself strong on their behalf. His power is made perfect in their weakness. Their sin and guilt, their weakness and powerlessness, their helplessness and inability are the occasions for the revelation of himself as their God, their help, savior, and redeemer.

As their help, he comes very near to them. A help comes to you, draws near to you, and lifts you up when you have fallen. God comes near unto his people. Oh, most gloriously, he came near to them in the incarnation of Christ Jesus. Then God the Son, who is and remains true and eternal God, took on himself and added to his divine nature of the flesh and blood of the virgin Mary and became man. He entered into the womb of Mary and was born of Mary. He came not as a prince and a lord but as a servant, as despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. When he came near, he not only took the flesh of the seed of Jacob, but he also took all the sins of Jacob, all his guilt and his pollution, and all the guilt and the pollution of all the people of God. Jesus took it and made it his, so he became sin for them and was made a curse for
them.

Because he had their guilt and their sin, he was also crucified and cursed by God on the tree of the cross. Jesus took their sin and their curse. He made perfect satisfaction for that sin at the cross and earned for them righteousness, holiness, and eternal life. He made sure God’s promise to them. Because Jesus did that, God raised him from the dead.

Still Christ Jesus comes ever nearer and nearer to them. He comes to them in his Spirit and indwells them. Christ regenerates them and bestows on them his life. He washes them in the depths of their beings from all their sin, guilt, and pollution in his own blood. He incorporates them into himself, so that they are in him and he is in them. And as sovereign lord over all, he works all things according to God’s eternal counsel for their salvation and everlasting life. By his Spirit he leads them straight on toward their heavenly home.

Oh, indeed, blessed is the man who has the God of Jacob for his help! And because he has the God of Jacob for his help, such a man has hope. Whose hope is in Jehovah his God! Or better, whose hope is upon Jehovah his God.

Hope. What a lovely word!

That is what man has nothing of in this world. That is what all the affliction, trouble, sorrow, sin, and weariness of this world seek to take away from God’s people, his Jacob. The devil, sin, and the world seek to make God’s people despair, to despair as the world despairs, and with the despairing world to abandon themselves to the sins and wickedness of the world, so that like the despairing world their motto becomes, “Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” So to live in the deep and dark hole of despair and to wallow and perish in that despair is hopelessness.

Hope is like a light that penetrates our darkness and our night, the darkness and night of our sin, of our affliction, and of our trouble. Hope is the expectation of great good. 

Hope not in princes! That is what man is constantly tempted to do: hope in princes. To hope in himself: “I will make my life go how I want it to go; I will force the outcome that I want; I will manipulate the circumstances to achieve my end.” Jacob was always trying that. By lies and deceits and superstitions, he aimed to have the blessing. But all that was for naught. Hope not in princes. There is nothing in man that can be the ground for such an expectation of great good. For in a single day he perishes. He has no strength, power, or resources to bring God’s promise or to give blessedness.

Blessed is the man whose hope is in Jehovah his God. Because God is his help. Because God—God of heaven and earth, God of Jesus Christ, God of a faithful and unconditional promise—is that man’s help, he has hope. Whose hope is in the Lord his God. God is his expectation.

That means having faith. Where there is no faith, there is no hope. Faith believes God’s promise and word. Faith clings to Christ and draws things out of Christ. Faith rests and relies on God’s word of promise and salvation. Faith saves. By faith that man is delivered from the crushing guilt of his sin. By faith he is sanctified and made a new creature. By faith he is assured that God is his God. By faith he is confident that not only to others but to him also God gives righteousness and eternal life.

And thus that man has hope upon God. He has hope that over against all his sin, now and to the end of his life, God will forgive him for Christ’s sake. He has hope in all his afflictions that God will turn them to his eternal profit. He has hope in all his life, in every circumstance of his life, that God will not leave him nor forsake him. He has hope that all things in this life do not come to pass by chance but are brought to him by the fatherly hand of God. He has hope in life that God is blessing him in all things. He has hope that after this life God will take him to eternal glory. He has hope that at the end of the world God will raise him up and give him everlasting life in a new heaven and a new earth.

In God there is every reason and every ground for such hope. He is the God of Jacob. He is Jehovah, the almighty and unchanging God. He is the God of a faithful and unfailing promise. He is the God of eternal election. “I am Jehovah, I change not; therefore, ye sons of Jacob are not consumed!”

Is not such who has the God of Jacob as his God a happy man? It may not seem that way to Jacob and to all Jacob’s seed. When Jacob looked around at his circumstances, he was tempted to despair. When he thought that he had lost his beloved Joseph, he cried out in despair, “All these things are against me!” And so Jacob’s seed too walk in the valley of the shadow of death. There are many trials and many afflictions. Jacob’s seed must pass through fires that threaten to consume them and waters that appear to overwhelm them. They are tempted, tried, and persecuted. They grow weary. Often they are troubled in mind, body, and soul. Their sins appear so great, and their faith is so little.

So Jacob spent his life crying to God. God heard Jacob. Never did Jacob knock on heaven’s door and find it closed to him. God came to Jacob. God blessed him. God delivered him. God turned all to his profit.

Happy is the man who has the God of Jacob for his help, who hope is in Jehovah his God. He is happy. That happiness is a God-wrought contentment and joy in God as the God of his salvation. He is happy because he is blessed. He is the object of God’s favor and grace, and never of his wrath and curse. He is happy because God is his God and his help. He is happy because he rests in God. He is happy because he expects from God good and only good.

There is no happiness like that. 

Oh, man tries to make happiness consist in everything else besides God. He will seek his happiness in everything except God. Man weaves dreams of happiness for himself. He seeks happiness within, in things, and in about everything in creation that can be imagined: his money; his booze; his drugs; his exercise; and his houses, shopping, fun, and pleasure. They are his happiness and his help and his hope. He seeks his happiness in men. “They will save me!” But they will always disappoint. Call on them in the day of trouble, and you will see that they are as deaf, blind, dumb, and powerless as the stumps and images of the heathen.

But the God of Jacob—he hears. In his grace he hears. In his power he delivers. He is the only source of happiness, and there is no happiness apart from him. That is a happiness that consists in a peace that passes all understanding, a contentment that overcomes every trial, a hope that brightens the worst darkness. Such a man is blessed now. He is blessed in eternity. He is blessed in his seed. He is blessed in all.

The truly happy man!