It’s hard to figure out the persistent unbelief of the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, but Jesus never seems to give up on them. For example, consider the raising of Lazarus as recorded in John 11. It starts this way:

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha…So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. (John 11.1 – 6, ESV)

“He stayed two days longer” even though Jesus loved the family. Why? So he could do the resurrection miracle. Why? So God would be glorified and the Son of God would be glorified. Why? As I say, to give one more chance for people to realize who Jesus was and believe in him. So what happened?

When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him, but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.

So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all. Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” …So from that day on they made plans to put him to death. (John 11.43 – 53, ESV)

Many believed…others told the Pharisees who saw Jesus as a problem to be solved, not the son of God to be followed. Jerusalem…the place where no good deed goes unpunished.

When [Peter and John] were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, “‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed’—for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. (Acts 4.23 – 28, ESV)