What an awful mistake to set yourself against the Son of God. How could they miss who he was? That's probably a complicated answer, but some of it is in what they said as they discussed Jesus' growing fame: the people would follow him, and then the Romans would destroy their nation. That seems a bit harsh. Would the Romans really do that? Destroy the nation because someone new became popular? Or did the religious leaders, who also had some political power, fear that they'd lose the level of control they had? Probably a bit of both. We can take a lesson from them, though: certainly, we must be careful never to set our own need for control over what God is doing.