Think about this: What do you think? It’s kind of weird, right? Why did the people who seemed to know the most about God and His Word have such a hard time believing in Jesus?
It might help to compare their situation to an event you can understand better. For example, imagine that you expect your favorite uncle to send you an amazing robot for your birthday. This robot can do so many things! You can’t wait to get it and show your friends. But then your birthday comes, and your uncle doesn’t send you the robot. He doesn’t give you anything at all. Instead, he sends a message to tell you he’s planning on flying in to visit you (he lives far away) and then he’s going to take you somewhere special. Would you be disappointed? Maybe even angry?
The Hebrew people had spent generation after generation believing in one God—this made them different from all the other people around them. They became a great nation, but when they disobeyed God, they were scattered. However, they believed God promised to send a Messiah to rescue them and to make them a great nation again. Many religious scholars living in Jesus’ time on earth believed that God meant to send His people someone like a military commander—a leader who would overthrow all their oppressors, including the Romans, and show the world how powerful God’s people were.
Imagine feeling like that, and then meeting Jesus, who told you things like “you should forgive your enemies again and again.” Even worse than that, He says God is His Father and that He is God too! Think about it this way: All these years you’ve believed in one God who could rule the whole world, and then Jesus comes along and says something that sounds like there is more than one God. And then He says that the God He’s talking about doesn’t want His people to rule over everyone and conquer enemies, but instead, He wants us all to forgive people and love them! That’s not the message the religious leaders were expecting at all!
It might be a little like being promised a robot today and getting the promise of a future trip with your uncle instead.
But now imagine your uncle does fly to see you and he takes you on amazing adventures—things you never dreamed of doing! And you had so much fun that you wouldn’t trade it for a million robots.
The Jewish leaders were kind of looking for a robot. And because they were counting so much on that robot, they missed out on the amazing adventure God had sent to live right with them. In fact, they missed out on God Himself.