Keith is here for a second and last week before he goes back to Seattle with his family. And he's going to be finishing Habakkuk. He did two of those sermons, I guess it was at Christmas time, not last summer, when I had the surgery. And he's back here for two weeks. And so come on up, Keith, and give us the word of God. Good morning. It's good to see everyone here. Let's open with the word of prayer. Our great God and Heavenly Father, you indeed are God and have worked your mighty works of judgment and redemption throughout history. And we pray, Father, that as we meditate upon your word and contemplate your mighty acts that you have done in the past and the way in which you have dealt with sin and also made a way of salvation for your people, we pray, Father, that you would minister to the hearts of your people today. We pray that your spirit, Father, convict those who need conviction, would comfort those who need comfort, would illuminate our minds to understand your word, and that your spirit would also plant that word in our heart in a way that changes our perspective on the way in which we live our lives. I'm more in conformity with your will rather than our own. We ask you to do these things, Father, knowing that if your spirit is not present and active, it is not preaching at all. It's just a man talking. We pray, Father, that you would minister to your people today. We pray this with confidence, knowing indeed the promises you've given us in your word. We pray these things in the name of our Lord, our God, and our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. We're in chapter three of Habakkuk, and this chapter, as Doug has read earlier, is a poem, or more precisely, it is a psalm. First and foremost, it is a prayer that is offered to God by a prophet who knows that he is about to experience extreme trial and persecution and judgment from the hand of God himself, using the Babylonians or the Chaldeans as his tool of judgment. In verse 16 of this chapter, the prophet writes, when I heard referring to the judgment that God had told him he was sending, When I heard my body trembled, my lips quivered at the voice. Rottenness entered my bones, and I trembled in myself that I might rest in the day of trouble." The prophet no longer has any theological or philosophical problems as he did before. If you recall, this book is basically a prayer journal of the prophet and God's responses to his prayers. In chapter one, came to the Lord saying, God, look at all of the sin in Judah. Look at the violence that is everywhere. Look at how there is robbery and thieving. And look how justice never goes forth, because those in the seat of justice are perverting it, showing favoritism to the wicked and to the wealthy. And the poor are downcast and downtrodden. How can you stand by and allow wickedness to increase in and amongst your people? And God's response to Habakkuk was, I am not doing nothing about this, as you suggest, Habakkuk. I'm raising up the Chaldeans. They're going to come sweep through the land, overthrow Syria, and come lay siege to Jerusalem. And essentially, a Holocaust is going to come upon Judah to teach her to return to me, essentially. And he also promises that Judah will not be completely annihilated, but they will be returned And the prophet hears that, OK, thank you, God. You're dealing with the sin. I'm glad for that. But as he thought about it, he realized, wait, the Chaldeans are far more wicked and far more evil than we are. This was his philosophical conundrum. How can you, God, who is holy and cannot look upon sin, use a more wicked people to judge a less wicked people? And he wrestled with that, and he prayed that. And then the Lord basically responded to him similar to the way he responded to Job in the end of that book, and basically set him straight. And now, Habakkuk, after hearing that, has resigned himself to the fact that the Lord is the Lord, and his will will be done, and his will is good and mighty. And he has gone through this struggle within himself of wrestling with God's will, compared with what he desires to see on earth, and he's resigned himself to accept it, And this psalm that he writes is how he has worked through that difficult struggle, philosophical struggle, of sometimes the ways of the Lord don't seem right to us in our own eyes. But when we look down the corridors of time, we know that his will is always right and always just and holy. And this is what he's resigning himself to. And this is his conclusion, which is very instructive for us as we go through difficult times in our own lives as well. So he no longer has any theological or philosophical problems as before, but now he's left only with the problem of true and genuine human fear of the trouble that is coming. We read in verse 16 that he trembled within himself, thinking that he might rest. That doesn't mean that he might relax, but he's saying He is thinking that he might die in the day of trouble, or the day that the Chaldeans come knocking on the gates of Jerusalem. And when you think about it, God's told his prophet he's raising up these Chaldeans to come besiege, loot, destroy, burn Jerusalem and the temple. They're going to kill many of the Jews with the sword, those who survived the famine as a result of the siege, and carry the rest off into captivity. The Holocaust was coming to Judah, but God never told Habakkuk whether he himself would survive this judgment. And Habakkuk, the great prophet of Almighty God, was genuinely afraid and terrified of the judgment that was coming upon Judah. I think that it's very comforting It's very comforting to me personally, and I hope to you, that the great prophets of old were not superheroes as we often think of them when we're children in Sunday school, but they were men like us who were weak, who were frail, who struggled with a lack of faith at time, they struggled with doubts, they struggled definitely as Habakkuk does here with true and genuine fear in the weakness of his flesh. This is an important distinction Or there is an important distinction between a lack of faith and the weakness of our own flesh. Even Jesus himself sweat droplets of blood knowing that he was about to suffer. Fear is not always a lack of faith. It is not always something that should cause us to doubt our salvation in the Lord. God's greatest men of faith, including Old Testament prophets like Habakkuk, often struggled with fears and doubts, not because their faith was lacking, but because they were men. And to see the truth of God and have understanding of doctrine is very important. But even when we see and know the truth, we may still tremble physically. We may still suffer and anguish from grief, from despair of life itself, anguish over an unsaved child, fear of struggling with terminal illness, et cetera, et cetera. To suffer from grief, from fear, from despair, and from anguish does not necessarily mean that you have no faith in the Lord and his wonderful plan for your life. The wonderful part comes after our life and we need to recognize that. Although the devil may and often does try to persuade us otherwise. God created us. He knows our frame. He understands our weaknesses. And he provides wonderful provision for us. First of all, he tells us in his word that even His greatest servants know something of the physical fear while mixed with faith and how to struggle to reconcile the two in their own walk with the Lord. And how many of us have never struggled in that way, at least to some degree? We see that this is true with Habakkuk, certainly, but we also see this in Abraham, the father of all the faithful. Likewise, King David admitted that his flesh often failed him in spite of his great faith and having a heart after the Lord. The great prophet Jeremiah was given a prophecy to deliver to God's people, which was so dark, so depressing and filled with such coming judgment that at times he felt like he could not even endure the ordeal of simply bringing God's word to his people. It was painful, physically painful for him to do that. The message was so terrible that even though his spirit was willing and ready to deliver it, His flesh naturally shrank away from it. We see John the Baptist suffering physically in prison, and even though he had prophetically announced and prepared the way of the coming Messiah of Jesus, and he proclaimed that indeed he was the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, remember that proclamation? He asks his followers while in prison to ask Jesus During his last days, whether or not Jesus was truly the Messiah, he was struggling. He was not a superhero. That is not our ideal, to hit superhero level of Christianity. It doesn't exist. Because we're human. We're frail and we're weak. And God created us this way so that we would be dependent upon him. I mean, in John the Baptist, or John the Reformed Baptist, as I like to refer to him, We see the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, according to Christ himself, actually wrestling with doubts as to whether or not Jesus is the Christ. We see the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians saying that in chapter seven, verse five, that our bodies had no rest and we were troubled on every side. Outside were conflicts, inside were fears. The first time he preached in Corinth, he did so with weakness, with fear, and with trembling. This is the great Apostle Paul. He could stand up in the Areopagus and stand up toe to toe with all of the greatest philosophers of the day, yet he went to Corinth and he did so in weakness, fear, and trembling. I find comfort in that. Such examples bring encouragement and great comfort to me, and hopefully to all of us, because we, know that even the greatest men of faith suffered as we suffer. They struggled as we struggle with fleshly weakness, with doubts and fears. Yet we never doubt, even for a minute, whether they were outside the grace of God, do we? But we sometimes think that of ourselves because we become myopic in our own personal lives. in situations. Such examples also encourage us by showing us that God truly understands our weaknesses. And just as he did with the saints of old, and he always showed them mercy and a way through their weakness by teaching them as he desires, I believe, to teach us, that we too can learn to experience true and everlasting joy even in the midst of the greatest of human suffering. What is a man, or what is a mere man, I should say, supposed to do in the face of fleshly suffering and despair? What did God provide to Habakkuk to sustain him and to sustain his joy and his faith when the Babylonians arrived at Jerusalem and began to besiege and destroy What is it that always sustains God's people when everything is apparently lost? It was not merely resigning oneself to fate and thinking there is no use crying over spilled milk. We do not see these men practicing some form of psychological detachment from their situation. They do not tell themselves that the best thing to do is to simply not think about it. It is what it is. That is what many of us do today when we're struggling with difficulties. We detach from it. We don't dwell upon it. We don't turn to the Lord. We try to avoid dealing with it. We distract ourselves from reality, which is actually the technical definition of the word entertainment. Distraction from reality. We distract ourselves from reality by going to the movies. by watching television, by going to a ball game, reading a book, engrossing ourselves in social media, that black hole, or some other form of entertainment, all aimed at distracting ourselves from the fears and struggles that we face. Distracting ourselves from the knowledge that our walk with the Lord isn't what it ought to be. Distracting ourselves from the darkness of the society in which we live and the ever-growing darkness. We often avoid it. and distract ourselves and detach ourselves. But this is not what the prophets of old did. We also do not see Habakkuk here attempting to be courageous and telling himself to stop whimpering, be a man and accept what is coming to him with courage. If we think about it, these are all ways in which the world today teaches us to stand up to difficult circumstances. Be Rambo. They find different ways to essentially tell people who are suffering under great distress, pull yourself together. If Habakkuk could simply pull himself together, he would have. But rather than trying one of these humanistic solutions to his fear, Habakkuk claims his right as a child of God to rejoice in the Lord. even though his physical body is literally shaking with fear and there is rottenness in his bones. He writes, beginning in verse 17, though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, though the labor of the olive may fail and the fields yield no food, though the flock may be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, in that day and age, in that time, in that region, their economy was absolutely dependent upon all these things. He's basically saying, even though every earthly means of survival be gone and taken away from us, what does he say in verse 18? If all of this happens yet, I will rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation. That is the rock that he holds onto in the midst of knowing the tide of Holocaust that is coming towards him. That he will rejoice in the Lord in spite of and in the midst of these terrible circumstances. This idea of rejoicing in the midst of tribulation is basically alien to the unbelieving world. And it is everything to the Christian. We have a rock to hold on to in the midst of tribulation. We do not rejoice our way out of tribulation, but we can rejoice in the midst of tribulation. And by faith, we remain triumphant, even in the midst of the worst of possible circumstances, rather than simply Exercising self-control with the aid of an iron will to overcome, like we often see heroes doing in the movies, we rejoice in God's will being done on earth, even though that may mean travesty for our personal lives. We rejoice. And notice that the text does not say that we rejoice because of our circumstances. That would simply be foolishness, but rather we rejoice in the Lord, the God of our salvation. As we have seen throughout the centuries of the persecution of Christ's church, we see many Christian martyrs going to their death singing hymns of praise and hymns of joy, even in the midst of the flames consuming their bodies. Rejoicing in the Lord while burning to death. Can you imagine that? taking joy in him and proclaiming the victory that Christ won for the salvation that God has given to them, which they knew they would soon see, even while their flesh trembled with fear and burn. And they knew very well what fate awaited them. God has given us as Christians the gift of Christian joy to see us through the most difficult of life's circumstances. It doesn't take away our troubles. That's not what it's supposed to do. And many Christians get confused by that. But what is it that makes this possible? How do we cling on to this joy in the midst of such despair and agony and pain and sorrow that we often go through? It's one thing to tell a Christian who is about to undergo a very difficult fight with cancer to rejoice in the Lord And it is completely another thing to be able to do that as a believer. God shows us in this prayer of Habakkuk, this psalm, where it is we ought to begin in order to claim that joy that the prophet exhibits at the end of his prayer. We do not begin to rejoice in the Lord simply by singing the word Alleluia 57 times in order to work ourselves up into an emotional feeling of closeness with the Lord. That is not what Habakkuk does. Doing that only creates a false emotional response that superficially overshadows the legitimate fears and struggles that we experience in this life. It's a Christian form of emotional detachment from reality, in my opinion. In spite of what some believe, Christian joy is not an emotion. So what is true joy? It is inner peace that comes from an absolutely unshakable confidence in our salvation in the world to come, and knowing that nothing that takes place in this present evil age can take that away. Joy is faith that in spite of our earthly circumstances, we are indeed, as God's word teaches us, truly more than conquerors through Christ. That is the rock we cling to in the midst of despair, when the flames are engrossing us, when trials overcome us. How do we gain this joy? How do we gain this inner peace that no circumstance in the world can touch? We begin first by expanding our horizons in order to gain a proper perspective. Simply staring at our own apparently hopeless situation in life in the face does not lead us to joy. It leads us to despair. It leads us to just navel-gazing, to discouragement. And in order to gain the right perspective that allows Christian joy to flow freely from our hearts, we ought to look not at ourselves, not at our own circumstances, but rather we look at almighty God and what he has done in history, which is exactly what the prophet does. He stops looking at his own personal circumstances and he looks back down the corridors of time and says, reminds himself of who his God is and what it is that his God has done in the past for his people. That's what he does in chapter three. This is a difficult chapter for English readers to fully grasp, I grant that, because not only is this chapter written in a high form of Hebrew poetry, it also employs a lot of prophetic imagery of what God has done in the past, which also alludes to what God will most assuredly accomplish in the future. That being said, if we look at verses three through seven, this is Habakkuk's way of describing the wondrous acts that God did in bringing Israel out from under the yoke of bondage in Egypt and led them through the wilderness and into the promised land. He writes in verses three through seven, almost, from the perspective of the Canaanites, who were living in the land at that time, who had heard news of this nation traveling through the wilderness, following this pillar of cloud and this pillar of fire by night, and the terror that must have overcome and overshadowed them, these Canaanites, as God led his people toward their homeland in order to possess it. They must have been terrified. It states that God comes from Timan, which is a city east of Israel located in Edom, where the nation of Israel began their journey west in order to cross the Jordan and begin the conquest. The holy one from Mount Paran is referring to the appearance of God in his glorious cloud in the wilderness between Egypt and Israel. And as we read verses three and four together, God's ushering his people into Canaan appears poetically Like a sunrise appearing in the east and the splendor of God is seen in the sky even before the sun crests the horizon and God's judgment spills out upon the Canaanites with pestilence going before him and plagues after as he cleansed the land that he had promised to Abraham in order to give it to his descendants. The Canaanites saw the sun rising. You see the light in the sky. And then as Joshua began walking toward their city, the rays of God's brightness and the glory that accompanied God's people overtook them. God appeared to the Canaanites and startled the nations, which had been firmly established for hundreds of years and shattered their foundations, and they quaked with fear at his coming. Verses 8 to 15 presents both imagery of the conquest of Canaan as well as God's defeating of the enemies of Israel from that point of time all the way up to Habakkuk's day. We also see in this section some prophetic imagery of Christ and the coming salvation that he would surely bring to God's elect. He calls God's war chariot the chariot of salvation in verse eight. It's an interesting phrase. The chariot of salvation. He states also in verse 13 that God went forth for the purpose of the salvation of his people and of his anointed, and even speaks of the destruction of Satan at the end of verse 13. The overall theme of this section is that God does not come to destroy the wicked merely for the sake of destroying the wicked. He destroys them for the sake of his people, for the sake of his people, and for the sake of bringing about the coming of his anointed one for the purpose of salvation. That's the purpose of God's judgment, is to accomplish his purpose of salvation. Judgment and wrath, power and glory throughout history was God working out his plan of salvation for his people. Habakkuk is reminding himself of this in this poem. In the midst of his distress, he admitted and acknowledged and was internalizing that yes, God was about to destroy Jerusalem, and even the temple, and many if not most of his friends and family would die in the process. Perhaps he himself would die as well. But God's judgment always has been about bringing and accomplishing the salvation of his people. He's holding on to that thought by looking back at the Lord's works. He's reminding himself of this, and it helped him to gain a proper perspective that wasn't simply looking at his own circumstance. He realized that what he was about to go through, the suffering and terror, was part of God's plan of salvation as he disciplined his people. Judgment was indeed coming. And from his human perspective, it looked as though all hope was lost. But from God's perspective, it was coming in order to bring about salvation. It was this perspective, God's perspective, that allowed Habakkuk to realize that no matter what happened to his earthly body, it was inconsequential. What was important was that God himself was in control. He told Habakkuk, you would not believe what I am doing. I am raising up the Chaldeans. I am going to accomplish this act of judgment upon you. He realized God was in control, and God was going about his work not of simply disciplining his people, which he was, but he was accomplishing the plan of salvation. He's grasping onto that hope, which is the source of Christian joy. It's from this perspective that allowed the prophet to pray with all sincerity in the midst of his distress that no matter what, I will rejoice in the Lord and I will joy in the God of my salvation. Do we pray this way when we're struggling? Part of the purpose of this book is God teaching us how to pray, how to relate to God in the midst of suffering. Do we pray that way? How often do we pray in the midst of our suffering, our discomforts, God take away my suffering, Take away my discomfort. Heal my body. Oh, and by the way, all glory and honor be unto you. May your will be done, not mine. But really, take away my pain. Take away my discomfort. Take away my illness. May your will be done as long as you do what I want. The prayers we often pray in the midst of our suffering are often prayed. completely out of a heart fixated upon our own immediate circumstances, rather than a heart focused on the historical and wondrous acts that God has done throughout history in order to bring about and accomplish our salvation. Which is why Christians often struggle with finding joy in the midst of trial. Because we're focused on ourselves rather than Him. Focusing on our own circumstances does not bring us true joy. Rather, we must learn to recite God's wondrous acts of glory and power, which have been demonstrated in real and true history, in order to accomplish his purposes in salvation. That's the rock we cling to in the midst of suffering. Habakkuk recited the historical facts about God's glory in ushering Israel out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, across the wilderness to their new home, granting them the miraculous victory after miraculous victory over the cursed nations that dwelt there. And we too can take joy in these great miracles that God performed in the past, knowing that the God that we worship, the God that has saved us, is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. But we are in a far better position than Habakkuk was We can add to the history that he was aware of of God's wondrous and mighty acts, can we not? And see how it was that God's plan of salvation was fulfilled through his anointed one on the cross. Salvation was fulfilled through an act of great suffering. The Babylonians did come indeed and destroy Jerusalem and the temple. They really did carry off the people of Judah into captivity. And in due time, God turned his fury back upon the Babylonians, and he destroyed them, as he promised Habakkuk he would do. And he brought back a remnant of Israel to Jerusalem, just as he told the prophet. The city was reestablished. The temple was rebuilt. But we can go even further than that. We can look at the historical facts of the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. his perfect life, his vicarious death, and most importantly, his resurrection and ascension, and present and ongoing work to accomplish the salvation of his people as our great high priest. If ever a situation in human history seemed hopeless, it was when God poured out judgment upon his own anointed one as he was crucified and buried. His closest disciples must have felt fear, and utter despair. It seems as though all of their hopes for what Christ was going to accomplish as the Messiah had just been crucified along with him. Rottenness must have entered their bones. Yet even then, God's judgment was not without purpose. We know that. But that day, and the next, and the next, the disciples didn't fully understand that. And they were struggling with the same conflict of how can God be glorified and honored and how can his will be done in the midst of this kind of travesty? Yet even in God's judgment that he poured out on his son certainly was not without purpose. And the purpose of God was the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. His purpose in judgment is the same, to bring about the salvation of his people. We can rest assured of that. And when Christ rose again from the dead, that salvation was assured, for the powers of sin and death were crushed. And when we recount and declare God's victories over his enemies, especially his victory over sin and death, we are recounting historical facts as truth, not some form of mythical legend. Jesus Christ literally, historically rose from the dead in the flesh. This is not an idea, it is history. This is one of the ways in which Christianity differs from all other religions, is that it's grounded in actual history and not mere ideas and speculation. We do not merely say that he lives in my heart, but that he lives in the flesh, in reality. And he will surely return one day to bring about the end of all things as we know it and the beginning of all things as we will know it for eternity to come. Consider even further historical facts which we can recite as we contemplate God's acts throughout history to testify of the truth of God's persistence in bringing about the salvation of his church. The Jews persecuted the church in very cruel ways and they were warned that if they persisted in doing this, that they would be finally destroyed. And they had been warned of this in the Old Testament. They had been warned by John the Baptist, and they had been warned by Christ himself. And when they persisted in their disobedience and their rejection of the Messiah, God destroyed the nation of Israel in AD 70. The temple was cast down, and the people were scattered among the nations. And the events of AD 70 must never be forgotten. This is God pouring out wrath upon sinners, which is part of his plan of redemptive history. Neither must we forget what happened to the Roman Empire, which had persecuted the Christian church and tried to destroy her. What dark times Christians must have felt in the midst of this persecution, yet God worked through the Roman Empire in order to make his Christianity expand worldwide. He turns the persecutor into a missionary culture, which is astounding. Never forget the history of the Christian church in the Middle Ages, the history of the Protestant Reformation, and the extreme persecution of our Protestant forefathers at the hands of Satan working through the Roman church. Again, we see a period of time when all seemed to be lost. Or if Christians would have focused only on their own personal circumstances, They would not have been singing hymns in the flames, would they? Yet onward went the work of God bringing about salvation to his people. In the great stories of the Scottish Covenanters and the Puritans, the same principles illustrated again and again. It's not just biblical history, it's real human history, where God's judgment and the suffering that he allows his people to go through accomplishes his purpose of salvation. When we look back at how God has worked throughout all of history, like Habakkuk, we will be able to rejoice in the midst and in spite of the darkest of circumstances that we could ever face. It's when we look at him and his work and understand that the darkest of days were meant to bring about the brightness of his glory and salvation. over and above all other facts of human history and God's working in it is the fact of Jesus Christ himself. We are given the details of his earthly life in the gospel so that we may have consolation in times of struggle. We must remember that the son of God, he has been through this world as a man, like us. Even though he was very God of very God, he knew what it was to be hungry and tired and sorrowful. He experienced what it is like to agonizing, overcoming physical affliction that he knew he was going to endure to the point of sweating drops of blood. And he went through a torturous death. He knew also what it was like to be tempted and to face head on the powers of Satan, sin and death and hell in their full strength. Hebrews reminds us that we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. He can sympathize with our weaknesses. He did not simply tear open the curtain and allow us access. But he is the one bringing us there. We have a high priest who brings us to the throne. Without him, we cannot come. But we do have a high priest who does sympathize with us, who is with us whenever we come before the throne of grace in a true and spiritual way. And in our agony, in our time of weakness, in our struggles with temptation of besetting sin, or our torment over a broken marriage, over an unbelieving and rebellious child, the grief of the death of a loved one, the fear of coming death that faces each of us, no matter what the weakness of our flesh is that we may be struggling with, we can always turn to our great high priest with confidence, Hebrew says, with confidence, with assurance that he understands, that he knows our fears because he has faced them. He understands our loss. He understands our suffering. He understands our struggles. And he also knows how to comfort us. and to hold our hand and bring us right before the throne of God in the midst of the worst possible human circumstances, which brings us joy that passes all understanding. He knows how to teach us how to rejoice in the midst of suffering and distress. And as our high priest, he knows how to intercede on our behalf to the father and to present us to him spotless. and blameless. So then, we live in a sinful world. Darkness is growing all around us in many ways, which we are all aware of, politically, personally, in our families. Perhaps God is going to pour out judgment upon our nation one day soon. We certainly deserve it. as much, if not far more, than Judah did in Habakkuk's day. And that would be a terrible thing to have to suffer through. But come what may, let us rejoice in the Lord. Let us joy in the God of our salvation. For when we see his hand of judgment at work, he's accomplishing the salvation of his people, which is his will being done on earth rather than our own. Let's bow together in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come before you this morning, this Lord's Day, this one day in seven that you have set aside for your people to be reminded of who you are, to be reminded of your great acts in history, not just the acts that we look at and say, oh, that was wonderful, but the acts of judgment and terror that you inflict upon sinners and sin. Judgment, which often sweeps up the righteous along with the unrighteous. We pray, Father, that if your judgment is poured out upon our nation, we pray that in the midst of difficult personal circumstances and struggles with sin, struggles with illness, struggles with all the things we struggle with, Father, we pray that you would help us to look at your acts of judgment throughout history and see how your plan of salvation worked out through them. Let us trust, Father, in your will over and above our own. Teach us, Father, how to cling on to that rock of hope, that rock of the gospel that can never be shaken in the midst of our difficult circumstances. Teach us, Father, to rejoice in the midst of trial, in the midst of tribulation. As we look forward to that great day when we will see the salvation of the Lord, in a way that we only have a strong and fervent and assured hope of today. Help us in these things, knowing that we indeed are a frail people who need your help, which is why you gave us this day to be reminded of it. We ask you these things in the name of our Lord, our God, and our Savior, Jesus Christ.