Audio  Senseless acts of violence, terrorism, and murder. Drug and alcohol abuse. Sexual abuse. Environmental disasters. Systemic injustice in which some are punished beyond the extent of their crimes, and others get off unpunished. Such things plague our society today. Almost every headline during this past news-filled week has related to one or the other of these issues. And yet, we constantly hear that the Bible is an antiquated book that has no relevance to our contemporary world. In just the three verses we have read, we see all of those matters addressed clearly. Habakkuk lived 2,600 years ago, and yet in his day, society was plagued by the same concerns that affect us today. This very week, in our own state, we have seen images in the news that reflect back decades to a day and time that we all hoped we had moved beyond. But these societal concerns that we have listed, and more that could be added to the list, are not the root of the problem. They are symptoms of an underlying cause: human sinfulness. Because the human heart and mind are warped by sin, we see the same manifestations of it over and over again throughout history. We cannot evolve beyond it; we cannot educate ourselves out of it. Habakkuk’s day and age was much like our own, in that the primary concerns of the righteous Israelites involved moral degradation in their homeland and global unrest sparked by militant terror on the part of the Babylonians who branched out from modern-day Iraq to conquer by force and destruction. Many wondered why God did not stop them. But God had declared that He was in fact using them to accomplish His purpose. The Jewish people had violated God’s covenant with them and earned for themselves divine chastening and judgment. Babylon was the tool that God would use to deliver it. But the Babylonians were not exempt from God’s moral standards. They did not see themselves as divine agents of the one true God. Instead, they saw themselves as emissaries of their pagan deities, establishing a name for themselves in the world in the name of their gods. And so, in the exercise of their terror, they exceeded what was fitting. The punishment they inflicted on nations exceed the crimes for which God was bringing about judgment. And now the crimes of the Babylonians had to be punished in turn. The passage before us is part and parcel of a larger section dealing with the impending doom of Babylon. Though they had conquered many lands and enslaved many peoples, the day was soon to come in which all the survivors of those peoples would see Babylon fall and would taunt and mock them in their demise. Five pronouncements of “Woe,” or “taunt-songs” are given from verses 6 through 20. Having considered three of them in weeks past, we come to the fourth today. In this one, we are dealing with the issue of crime and punishment – namely, the crimes committed by the Babylonians, and the punishment that would come upon them. But this is not merely a lesson in ancient Mesopotamian history. As we have said, the issues plaguing the world in that day were no different than the ones that occupy the news hour today. The crimes committed by the Babylonians in our text are parallel to many things we see going on around us. Therefore, the punishment that is meted out in God’s justice here in our text must be relevant for us as well. I. The crimes of sinful men are many. (vv15, 17) Every generation has had a person or entity that it has considered to be the epitome of evil in the world. Most recently, perhaps we might say that it was Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda; ISIS; or Boko Haram. A generation ago, it would have been Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Third Reich. In Habakkuk’s day, there would have been few if any who would contest that the moniker could be fittingly applied to Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian Empire. The accounts of the Bible, secular historians, and even the inscriptions of the Babylonians themselves all accord with one another on the atrociti