Articles
Rejecting Truth
Sometimes it is hard to accept the truth. Jeremiah spent his life trying to reveal God’s truth to Judah. Many people rejected him. They found themselves in a peculiar position. On the one hand, they knew Jeremiah was a prophet (Jer. 42:1-3), so they would seek him out for revelations from God. On the other hand, they easily dismissed Jeremiah as a liar and not being from God (Jer. 43:1-2). Why did they reject the truths that Jeremiah was teaching? For the same reasons that people struggle to accept God’s word today.
When truth contradicts our faith.
When we believe one thing and someone tells us to believe something contradictory, it is easy to reject and ignore them.
God’s temple cannot fall. The people were convinced of this. They called out, over and over again, “the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord” (Jer. 7:4). It is God’s temple and God cannot be conquered, therefore the temple will not fall. They believed this wholeheartedly. When Jeremiah said the temple would fall (Jer. 26:1-6) they wanted to kill him (Jer. 26:7-8). His message was contradictory to their faith.
The people thought they had good reason for their faith that the temple would not be destroyed. After all, it had never fallen before. Enemy nations had attacked Jerusalem on multiple occasions, but the temple always stood afterwards. It had never happened before so why believe that it could happen now? Jeremiah answered, that the tabernacle of God had once stood in Shiloh (Jer. 7:12-14) . It wasn’t there anymore and Shiloh had been conquered. It had happened before. Still, the people would not listen.
When truth is obscured by error
Jeremiah wasn’t the only prophet of his time. Hananiah also stood up and prophesied that the captivity would be short while Jeremiah said it would last seventy years (Jer. 28). It isn’t hard to see how this would cause confusion. Throughout time, one of the great challenges in finding truth is weeding through and recognizing all of those who are teaching error. There were, in fact, multiple prophets muddying the waters in Jeremiah’s days (Jer. 14:13-16). They were lying and deceiving the people, causing confusion at the time. But isn’t it interesting that we don’t have the books of those false prophets? Why not? In the end, they were proven to be false and Jeremiah was proven to be right. But for a time, the contradicting messages made it more challenging for the people to determine the truth.
When truth isn’t what you want it to be
Why would the people listen to the false prophets instead of Jeremiah? The false prophets delivered a message the people wanted to hear. There would be no captivity. You will be safe (Jer. 14:13). Then, when those didn’t come true, they said, the captivity would be very short (Jer. 28:3). Everyone wanted those things to be true. Even Jeremiah wanted it to be true. After hearing one of these messages he said, “Amen! May the Lord do so” (Jer. 28:6). But wanting it to be true does not make it true. However, when faced with multiple teachings, it is easiest to choose to accept the one you like.
The people of Jeremiah’s day often rejected the truth, choosing instead to embrace what they already believed and what they wanted to be true, all the while they were being encouraged to do so by false teachers confirming their biases. This is not the way to find truth. Jeremiah was consistently proven to be right and from God. Those who listened to him were far better off than those who rejected him.
Only when we value truth more than what we already believe and more than what we want to be true will we put in the effort to weed through the contradicting messages and determine who is speaking the truth and who is just tickling our ears. When it comes to believing God’s word, it is up to us not to make the mistakes of the past.
