Truth has perished.

And you shall say to them, ‘This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.’

Jeremiah 7:28

This chapter of Jeremiah is really hard to read without cringing at the harshness of our sin. These words were part of a public sermon that God commanded Jeremiah to preach at the gates of the temple in Jerusalem (Jeremiah 7:2). In it he takes the nation of Judah to task for superstitiously holding to temple rituals while simultaneously personally neglecting the heart and lifestyle changes that God’s Law was meant to make within them. They said God lived among them at His temple. They did not live like it mattered at all. And in this way they defied and disobeyed a holy God.

They went after false gods in their deliberate disobedience (Jeremiah 7:18). They did not obey when God repeatedly used His prophets to call them back (Jeremiah 7:24-26). And this pattern would just keep cycling through generations, even with this very sermon as Jeremiah preached to them (Jeremiah 7:27). They had rejected God’s truth, killing it by their idolatry. They had become the generation of God’s wrath by rejecting repeatedly His tender, passionate, strong calls to repentance (Jeremiah 7:29).

When God reveals His truth to people, they are responsible to Him with that knowledge. Rejection of His revelation is rejection of God. And when God’s merciful call to repentance is rejected, there is only His wrath and judgment upon sin left for those who refuse Him. God is generous in His revelation of the truth and His offer of salvation. He persistently called out to Israel to repent for generations before the truth finally perished and His judgment was all that was left for them. How we must learn to quickly heed His Word, repent of sin and neglect, and receive His grace!