How to SORT a date column and pass the thrid highest one to an SQL query

[karambos]

I import a file into Access which has 2 columns:
Serial and Date

This file has serials from many previous dates. A Serial can appear multiple times in the serial column but only once on a particular date.

The object of my investigation is to find those serials that appear in the last three read dates.

Reads are done on any three days Mon-Fri. Not necessarily on consecutive days. And often not in the same week.

I have written a VBA module that calls a query to spit out this data. Here's the SQL code for the query:

SELECT Serial
FROM 3days
WHERE date>=#12/4/2013#
GROUP BY Serial
HAVING count(*)=3;

As you can see, I am currently hard coding the date. I would like to have my SQL code do this:
SORT DISTINCT on Date descending
Note the third date from the top as a variable
Pass this variable into the SQL query in the where clause.

But my SQL isn't strong enough to do this.

I am grateful for any suggestions on how to do this.

[June7]

Date is a reserved word and should not use reserved words as field names.

Try:

WHERE [date]>= (SELECT TOP 1 [date] FROM (SELECT TOP 3 DISTINCT [Date] FROM table ORDER BY [Date] DESC)) AS TopDate