There are many ways to express the rejection of a person. The bluntest way is to tell a person off and make it clear to that person that you think nothing of him.
That is certainly an outright rejection in the most blatant and unmistakable way.
But a more subtle way, as well as a more common way, is to silently ignore that person and not to pay attention to whatever he say or do.
That seems to be the way that the people expressed their rejection of God.
And God knows it as He says through the prophet Jeremiah: But they did not listen, they did not pay attention; they followed the dictates of their own evil hearts, refused to face me, and turned their backs on me; they have grown stubborn and behaved worse than their ancestors.
Indeed, we don't have to make an outright expression of our rejection of God. We just don't have to listen to Him or walk in His ways. That would already indicate that God has got nothing to do with our lives.
In the gospel, Jesus freed a man from being possessed by a devil that was dumb, thus enabling the man to speak and to respond to the others around him.
Jesus came to free us from that deafness that dumbness that expresses a rejection of God.
It's a deafness that prevents us from listening to what God has commanded us, and it is a dumbness that prevents us from speaking the praises of God.
Let us ask God for His mercy and forgiveness so that Jesus can free us from our sins and to turn back to God.