The Audacity of Arrogant Words Text: Malachi 3:13-15
Introduction: God in the Dock
The book of Malachi is a series of divine disputations. It is a courtroom drama where God brings a charge against His people, and the people, with a shocking display of insolence, plead complete innocence. God says, "I have loved you." They reply, "How have you loved us?" God says, "You have despised my name." They ask, "How have we despised your name?" God says, "You have wearied me with your words." They retort, "How have we wearied you?" This is not a healthy relationship. This is the language of a rebellious teenager, caught red-handed, who looks the parent straight in the eye and says, "Prove it."
In our passage today, we come to the sixth of these disputes, and the charge is perhaps the most direct of all. God accuses them of speaking arrogant, harsh, and heavy words against Him. Their sin is verbal, but as the Lord Jesus taught us, the mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart. Their words were simply the exhaust fumes of a sick and sputtering engine. What we have here is a record of the grumbling discontent of God's covenant people, who had come to believe that serving God was a bad business deal.
This is a profoundly modern sin. We live in an age of therapeutic grievances. We are taught to think of ourselves as victims, and when our lives do not proceed according to our own script, our first instinct is to find someone to blame. And when we run out of human candidates, the blame often lands, however subtly, at the feet of God. We may not say it in so many words, but the sentiment is there, simmering just below the surface of our respectable church attendance. We look at the wicked prospering, we look at our own struggles, and the bitter question forms in our hearts: "What's the point?" Malachi confronts this attitude head-on. He shows us that this kind of thinking is not an innocent spiritual struggle; it is an arrogant verbal assault on the character of God Himself.
The Text
"Your words have been strong against Me," says Yahweh. "But you say, 'What have we spoken against You?' You have said, 'It is worthless to serve God; and what gain is it that we have kept His charge and that we have walked in mourning before Yahweh of hosts? So now we call the arrogant blessed; not only are the doers of wickedness built up, but they also test God and escape.'"
(Malachi 3:13-15 LSB)
The Charge and the Counterfeit Innocence (v. 13)
The confrontation begins with God's direct accusation.
"'Your words have been strong against Me,' says Yahweh. 'But you say, 'What have we spoken against You?'" (Malachi 3:13)
The word translated "strong" here carries the sense of being harsh, heavy, or insolent. These are not just careless words; they are defiant words. They have weight. They are the verbal equivalent of shaking a fist at heaven. God has heard their talk, their backroom grumbling, their coffee-hour complaints, their bitter mutterings, and He calls them on it. He says, your speech has been an offense against Me.
And what is their response? It is the same feigned ignorance we have seen throughout the book. "What have we spoken against You?" This is not a sincere question. This is a challenge. It is the voice of a people so steeped in their own self-righteousness that they cannot even recognize their own sin. They have become spiritually tone-deaf. They are like a man who has been shouting insults all day and then asks with a straight face, "Was I being loud?"
This reveals a profound spiritual blindness. Sin, when it is practiced and cherished, has a stupefying effect. It sears the conscience. These people were going through the religious motions. They were in the temple, they were offering sacrifices (albeit substandard ones), and in their own minds, they were the good guys. And because their hearts were corrupt, they could speak treason against the King and not even realize they were doing it. We must take this as a sober warning. It is entirely possible to sit in a pew every Sunday, to look and sound religious, while our hearts are churning with discontent and our private conversations are filled with "strong words" against God's wisdom, goodness, and justice.
The Utilitarian Complaint (v. 14)
God does not leave them in their feigned ignorance. He plays back the tape. He quotes their own words back to them, and in doing so, He exposes the rotten foundation of their faith.
"You have said, 'It is worthless to serve God; and what gain is it that we have kept His charge and that we have walked in mourning before Yahweh of hosts?'" (Malachi 3:14 LSB)
Here is the heart of the matter. Their entire relationship with God was transactional. They were spiritual accountants, and they had run the numbers. On one side of the ledger, they listed their "service": keeping His charge and walking in mourning. On the other side, they looked for the "gain," the "profit." And their conclusion was that the business of serving God was bankrupt. It was worthless.
Notice the two things they list as their investment. First, "we have kept His charge." They saw obedience not as the joyful response of a child to a loving father, but as a burdensome chore. It was a duty performed, a box checked. Second, "we have walked in mourning before Yahweh of hosts." This refers to their outward displays of piety and repentance. They had put on the sackcloth and ashes. They had adopted the somber posture of penitents. But it was all a performance. It was religious theater designed to extract a blessing from God. It was not genuine brokenness over sin; it was frustration that their religious machinery was not producing the desired results.
Their question, "what gain is it?" reveals everything. They did not see God Himself as the gain. Fellowship with the Almighty, the forgiveness of sins, the promise of eternal life, these things were not enough. They wanted a tangible, earthly dividend. They wanted health, wealth, and prosperity, and they wanted it now. This is the essence of all paganism. It is using religious ritual to manipulate the gods to get what you want. And when the vending machine doesn't dispense the desired product, you start kicking it. That is what they are doing here. Their words are the steel-toed boot of a disgruntled consumer kicking the divine vending machine.
The Cynical Verdict (v. 15)
Having concluded that their own piety is unprofitable, they now look at the world around them and draw a dark and cynical conclusion.
"So now we call the arrogant blessed; not only are the doers of wickedness built up, but they also test God and escape." (Malachi 3:15 LSB)
This is the classic lament of the man whose feet have almost slipped, the cry of Asaph in Psalm 73. They look out at the world and see a moral order that appears to be upside down. The "arrogant," the proud who live as though God does not exist, they are the ones who are "blessed." The "doers of wickedness" are the ones who are "built up," whose families and fortunes flourish. And most galling of all, they "test God and escape." They openly defy Him, they push the boundaries, they mock His law, and not only does the lightning bolt not strike, but they seem to get away with it completely.
Their logic is simple: if our service is worthless, and their arrogance is rewarded, then the only rational conclusion is to call evil good and good evil. They are accusing God of cosmic injustice. They are saying that He is either unable or unwilling to enforce His own laws. He is a landlord who lets the rowdiest tenants live rent-free while charging double to the ones who try to follow the rules.
This is a terrible place to be, but it is a common temptation. When we measure God's justice by the short ruler of our own lifespan and our own observations, we will always come to faulty conclusions. We see the snapshot; God sees the whole movie. They were rendering a final verdict in the middle of the second act, completely ignorant of the final judgment where all accounts will be settled with perfect justice.
The Gospel Answer
How does God answer this bitter complaint? The verses that immediately follow in Malachi speak of a book of remembrance for those who fear the Lord. But the ultimate answer to this cynical, transactional religion is found in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
First, Jesus Christ completely redefines what it means to "gain" from serving God. The people of Malachi's day wanted earthly profit. The gospel declares that the profit is God Himself. Jesus is the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in the field, for which a man will joyfully sell all that he has. To know Him, to be reconciled to Him, to be adopted as a son, this is the gain. If you have Christ, you are infinitely wealthy, even if you have nothing else. If you do not have Christ, you are utterly bankrupt, even if you own the whole world. The gospel smashes our utilitarian calculators.
Second, Jesus Christ is the only one who ever truly "kept His charge" with a perfect heart. He did not obey as a transaction to get something from the Father. He obeyed out of perfect, filial love. "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me," He said. Because of His perfect obedience, credited to us by faith, our obedience is no longer a desperate attempt to earn God's favor. It is a grateful, joyful response to a favor that has already been lavished upon us. We don't serve God to get into His good graces; we serve Him because we are already in His good graces through Christ.
Third, Jesus Christ is the only one who ever truly "walked in mourning" before the Father. His was not a performance. In Gethsemane and on the cross, He bore the full, crushing weight of our sin and rebellion. He mourned with a grief so profound it is beyond our comprehension. He did this so that our mourning could be turned to dancing.
And finally, the cross and resurrection are God's definitive answer to the problem of the prospering wicked. At the cross, it looked for all the world like the arrogant had won. The doers of wickedness were built up. They tested God and seemed to escape. The righteous Son of God was murdered, and evil had its hour. But that was not the end of the story. Three days later, God overturned the verdict of men. The resurrection is the down payment on the final judgment. It is God's solemn promise that a day is coming when the arrogant will not be called blessed, but will be brought to ruin. It is the guarantee that every strong word spoken against God will be answered, and every act of faithful, humble service will be remembered and rewarded, not with earthly trinkets, but with the glorious commendation of the Father: "Well done, good and faithful servant."