Dave Carnes, Dave Maddox, Jeb Jessup. We're out here early getting the sound set up. Holly Kirkpatrick did these signs for us. Kenny Ron obviously has built our offering receptacles. The task force that's been helping us think through things. Just a lot of thank yous. And I'm probably leaving somebody out, but I did want to express gratitude for all the help and work that goes into this. As we come back to the book of Habakkuk, I want to let you know that the passage we're going to consider this morning is actually the passage that I had in mind when this all blew up. And I thought about this passage, and it's what prompted me to want to just spend time in the whole book of Habakkuk. So let me read for us Habakkuk 3, verses 16 through 19. hear God's word. I hear and my body trembles. My lips quiver at the sound. Rottenness enters my bones. My legs tremble beneath me. Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble to come upon people who invade us. Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food. The flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls. Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God the Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the deer's. He makes me tread on my high places. To the choir master with stringed instruments. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. God, give us help, give us grace to understand your word and to apply it rightly. We ask in Jesus' name, amen. Y'all have a seat. I've made mention before that one of my favorite movies of all time is Chariots of Fire. which focuses on the story of Eric Little and Harold Abrahams, two British runners who compete together in 1924 Olympics in Paris. And really, I like that film because of its focus on Eric Little. He was just a remarkable, remarkable He was the son of Presbyterian missionaries, himself born in China. It's interesting, the Chinese actually do claim him as an Olympic athlete at a memorial they've made to him in China. He's known for having won a gold medal in the 400 in the 1924 Paris Olympics. Of course, the story behind that was he refused to compete in a qualifying heat for the 100, his best event. and was forced to run the 400, an event he had not competed in a lot, and ended up winning that gold medal in dramatic fashion. One of the events that's depicted in the film that really portrays the character of Eric Little is when he was running in a 400 meter dash in a meet between Scotland in France and he was knocked over by a French runner and was fell behind by 20 meters and ended up, if you've seen the film, it came out in 81. It's been out for a while. Eric Little picks himself up and ends up winning the race. It was an astonishing victory. And what was even more remarkable was that he had already won that day the 100 and the 200. And those of you who are who have been track athletes in the past, those two events had already taken a toll on him. He was just a remarkable man, a man who finished his life extremely well. He, again, refused under great pressure to compete in the 100 qualifying heats at the Paris Olympics because he wanted to honor the Lord on the Lord's Day. He's just a model of triumphant trust. That's the language I would use. And in fact, he's somewhat of an intimidating figure, because you look at Eric Little and you think, how could I ever be like him? How could I ever face circumstances like he faced them? And we'll come back to him in a moment, but how he faced the end of his life. He's a picture of triumphant trust. And I use that phrase intentionally, because I think that's what we see here in Habakkuk 3, 16 through 19, a picture of triumphant trust. Now, what does it look like? And we're going to be brief. Triumphant trust. has three components, as you might guess this morning, as I would share them with you. Three components. Triumphant trust doesn't panic. Triumphant trust fights for joy, and triumphant trust finishes the race, right? It fights, it does not panic, it fights for joy, and it finishes the race. Triumphant trust does not panic. Let's remember again where we are. Habakkuk the prophet is prophesying just before the southern kingdom, the kingdom of Judah, is going to be overrun by the Babylonians, by the Chaldeans. And Habakkuk starts off this prophecy really dismayed at the moral decay of Judah. And then he hears from the Lord that what I'm going to do is going to blow your mind. That's the Paul Bankson paraphrase. It's going to blow your mind, Habakkuk, because I'm going to send the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, this wicked, cruel nation. They're going to come and they're going to discipline my people. And then God says, then I'm going to discipline the Chaldeans for their sin. And so this shakes Habakkuk up. And so where we've been last week, if you were with us through the live stream, we focused on Habakkuk's prayer. And in chapter 3, verses 1 through 15, Habakkuk is praying. The prayer is captured really in verse 2. And then verses 3 through 15, Habakkuk says all these things, declares all these things about who God is. There's a lot of you speaking to God, a lot of you in verses in those verses, but then in verse 16, we get this shift. If you look, I hear and my body trembles, my lips quiver at the sound, rottenness enters my bones, my legs tremble beneath me, yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble to come upon people who invade us. So what is Habakkuk saying? He says, I see what's coming and my knees are quaking, my lips quiver. This frightens me. Habakkuk is being real with God. This is gonna be hard. This is gonna be difficult. But he goes on to say, yet I will quietly wait for the... the day of trouble to come upon people who invade us. But then look at verse 17. So there's this honest reaction in verse 16. Verse 17, though, even gets more brutal, if you will. Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the trees, the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food. The flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stands. Verse 18, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will take joy in the God of my salvation. So there's this admission by Habakkuk that this is scaring me to death, and then he outlines what's so scary. And basically, if you consider the day and time when Habakkuk was writing this or saying these things, it's an agrarian society basically saying this is going to be the catastrophe of catastrophes. It's going to be catastrophic. To put in our terms, the stock market could crash. Unemployment could reach unimaginable levels. A disease could ravage our nation. Now you know why I wanted to look at Habakkuk. Now maybe it's not getting that bad, but it's gotten bad. And we've all lived with fear and uncertainty, and we're still there to a degree. Now thank the Lord, things seem to be improving. And we praise Him for that. But we're far from being out of the woods yet, it would seem. But Habakkuk, here's the point, doesn't panic. He acknowledges the pain. He acknowledges the reality of his situation. But he says, yet I will quietly wait. It's Martin Lloyd-Jones. Faith is a refusal to panic. That's his quote. Faith is a refusal to panic. We're real with God. We're real about our struggles. We're real about our suffering. But we don't panic. We're willing to quietly wait. That's what triumphant trust looks like. It's a refusal to panic. It's not only a refusal to panic, but triumphant trust fights for joy. And I borrow a little bit from John Piper there, because I think that's what we see in verse 18, which we've already read again. Yet I will, you hear that purpose? Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will take joy in the God of my salvation. This is all going to happen. This is all going around me. But this is what I will do. This is what I will purpose to do. He says, I will take joy in the Lord. And if you're looking at the text, you'll notice Lord is spelled in all capital letters. And that's a reminder. That points us to the fact that the word there is the Hebrew word Yahweh or Jehovah. That's the God speaking to Moses out of the burning bush. That's the God who makes and keeps covenants. That's the God that Habakkuk says, I will rejoice in Him. In other words, I'm gonna force myself, despite circumstances, despite these fears, I'm gonna focus on Him. It's joy as we've seen already, despite circumstances, joy in Him, joy in the God of our salvation. It's what Paul writes about in Romans 8. Let me read for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written, for your sake we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. Knowing all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I'm sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. That's how you fight for joy. You camp out there. You set roots there. You remember the promise and purposes of God. You have a but if not, kind of faith. But if not, faith is. We've talked about that before. I think we've even talked about it before in this series. That's Daniel. That's Daniel's friend, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who refused to worship the idol that Nebuchadnezzar had set up. And so the threat was, you fail to worship this idol, you're thrown into this fiery furnace where you'll be burned to death. And Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego say to the king, You know what? We're not going to worship your idol. Our God is able to miraculously save us. We know that. But if not, we're not going to worship your idol. And that's where God's brought us. Lord, my retirement gets wiped out. I'm unemployed for a long time. I or a family member get this disease, this sickness. I'm still going to trust you. And how do we get there? We look to the gospel. What's the gospel? It's the bad news, good news, right? The bad news is we can't earn God's favor. The only thing we've earned from God is sin and His displeasure and judgment. But He in His grace and mercy has given us the work of His Son. He's given us His Son that we might be hidden in Him and forgiven and made right before Him through faith in His work. And so we fight for joy by going back to the gospel and not going to our circumstances. We say, God, would you give me grace to pray like Habakkuk, that I will rejoice in the Lord, that I will take joy in the God of my salvation. This has to mean that joy is not rooted in circumstances. It has to mean that. Habakkuk's saying, life is about to fall apart, but I'm gonna take joy in God. And the only way to get there is to stay rooted in God's grace and to plead for His grace. But if not, kind of faith. So faith is, is a refusal to panic. Faith is fighting for joy. Triumphant trust, really, I'd rather say. And then lastly, triumphant trust finishes the race. And we see that in verse 19. God, the Lord, is my strength. He makes my feet like the deer's. He makes me tread on my high places. God equips me for this. He gives me the cloven hoof of the deer that can tread on difficult terrain. He gives me the strength to go up into the high and difficult places. That's where the strength comes from. It's Psalm 121 again. He will not let your foot be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. God gives us the strength to finish the race. I remember the scene from Chariots of Fire where on the Sunday when Little was supposed to be running a qualifying heat in the 100, instead he's preaching in a local church An English-speaking church, I would imagine, there in Paris. And he preaches from Isaiah 40. And this was his text. And I can still hear the actor in his Scottish brogue saying eagles. That's the promise that God gives to us. I've mentioned probably one too many times. Did you know I ran a marathon? You run one, you get it out of your system. I was back in 2003. Let me tell you, I trained for that thing, and I had a time in mind I wanted to finish. But once that race got underway, you know what my goal was? It wasn't a time. My goal was, I want to survive this. I just want to get through it. I don't want the ambulance to pick me up. I just want to finish, and folks, that's our goal in the Christian life. It's to finish. It's to be drug across the finish line by God's grace, to hang on by our fingernails, and that by His grace to endure faithfully. And I've got good news for you. He promises us that grace. Philippians 1 verse 6, I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus. That's a promise. So we cry out to God for His grace and mercy. God, give me grace to finish the race. Because that's the goal, just to finish. Finish faithfully. Let me wrap up with this. Eric Little, after he had won fame and glory at the Olympics, left soon thereafter, much to the astonishment of Scotland, and returned to China as a missionary. They thought he was crazy. I mean, he was an incredible celebrity in Scotland, but he returned to China, he married, he had three children, and then World War II broke out. And as you know, the Japanese invaded China. And Little sent his wife and children to Canada, and he stayed behind to do ministry and ended up under Japanese occupation, being placed in a Japanese internment camp there in China. And under very, very difficult conditions, he ended up dying in that camp of a brain tumor. And I read a book not long ago about his life there. He died in 1943 before the war was over, never seeing his wife or children again. And it's reported that his last words on this earth where it's a complete surrender. It's a complete surrender. That's the key to triumphant trust. A complete surrender to the God who made us and who redeemed us. So the question is, are you surrendered to Him today? And I just would remind you, that's not a one-time thing. I grew up, quite frankly, in a in churches that almost taught that that's a one-time thing. If you've not surrendered your life completely to Christ, then you need to do something about that. Let me tell you something, you've gotta surrender your life to Christ every day, every hour. Sin is a failure to surrender. And everyone sins. And we need God's grace for complete surrender in the middle of difficult circumstances. Triumphant trust is a refusal to panic. Triumphant trust continues to fight for joy. Triumphant trust finishes, by God's grace, the race. May he give us grace to finish. Would you pray with me? Father, we thank you that your word gives us great and wonderful promises. May we lean on them. May we lean into you during these days. Give us grace to pray like Habakkuk. Help us to find joy in you. We pray for those who are with us, are connected to our service, who've yet to put their trust in Christ, who've yet to experience complete surrender to him through faith. We pray that that would happen by your spirit. Lord, encourage us this day. Thank you that we've been able to gather as a family and worship you even under these unusual for us circumstances. Thank you that you are God. We pray all in Jesus' name, amen.