Audio  The chief end of man, says the often quoted Westminster Catechism, is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. This is the highest purpose to which we can aspire; it is the answer to the immortal question, “What is the meaning of life?” Each of us has been given life by our Creator as a gift, and we are to use that gift in the exercise of bringing glory to God and enjoying Him in the intimacy of a personal relationship. It sounds quite simple doesn’t it? But in the world of real human experience, we find that nearly everything is at odds with this purpose. The world is so infected with sin that it lures and beckons us to defy this purpose. We ourselves, in our sinful nature – our flesh – are also corrupted by sin, so that our desires run counter to the glory of God and the enjoyment of Him. And of course, we have a great spiritual enemy, the devil, who is constantly at work seeking to persuade and tempt us to abandon the course of glorifying and enjoying God. We are fallen people in a fallen world. And that makes this seemingly simple purpose of life much more difficult to attain in real experience. In Jesus Christ, we are called to be in the world but not of the world. We are here, in this fallen world, as agents of reconciliation and transformation to bring glory to God through our lives and our work for Him in the midst of this world’s corruption. But we are to be on guard, lest we ourselves become corrupted by the ways of this fallen world. In this world, we are surrounded by people and things. God’s word is clear that we are to love people and use things to bring Him glory. But the world and the devil are always appealing to the sinfulness of our flesh to turn that upside down – to love things and use people to acquire them, that we might glorify ourselves instead of our Maker.   The Neo-Babylonian Empire that had burst onto the scene of world history during Habakkuk’s time is an example of this. Nabopolasser was perhaps initially motivated by noble ambitions to shake off the oppression of the Assyrian Empire. He united the Chaldean people and formed a strong military to secure independence. Soon enough, however, those ambitions became corrupted. He and his son Nebuchadnezzar began to advance against other nations, conquering, looting, torturing, and enslaving them simply because they could. No one in the world could stop them. In the meticulous providence of God, the uprising of the Babylonian Empire came at a time when God could use them to bring about the well-deserved judgment upon His own people. With the Northern Kingdom of Israel having already fallen to the Assyrians a century before, the Southern Kingdom of Judah had followed in their destructive ways. Injustice, idolatry and immorality were rampant among a people who had been established to bring glory to the God who had called them out for Himself, redeemed them from bondage and established them for Himself in a land that He gave them. In a short time, they would be steam-rolled by the Babylonians. But Babylon would not escape the judgment of God themselves. Though God used them, He did not endorse their methods or their motives. Babylonwas building an empire of self-aggrandizement, and they were breaking the backs of innocent people to do so. They would answer for it eventually in the perfect timing of God. Our text today is the third of five proclamations of judgment issued against Babylon. The Lord said that the day was coming in which all the plundered nations who had fallen prey to Babylonwould rise up and sing taunt-songs against them. Each one begins with a word of “Woe.” We’ve discussed two of them in previous weeks. This is the third. In these taunt-songs, Babylonis mocked by the words of its victims, who give voice to the condemnation of God Himself. With the passage of two and a half millennia, the world has changed a great deal. But in the words of the 19th Century French satirist Alphonse Karr, “the more things change, the more they s