The Lord drove home this point with two illustrations from the Old Testament. Because of an unrepentant attitude in Israel at the time of the prophets Elijah and Elisha, God purposely withheld His acts of mercy from the Jews and extended His blessing to individual non-Jews who believed in Him. In the same way, the unrepentant and unbelieving attitude of Israel at the time of Christ would result in the blessings of the proclamation of liberty being largely withheld from the Jewish nation, and instead going out to individuals of any nation who would repent and believe. When the liberty that Christ offers is shown to include the necessity of repentance from sin, and faith in the Lord Jesus as God , people get uptight. No one gets mad when Jesus is proclaimed as a great man who did good things, but when He is proclaimed as God, before Whom we sinners must repent, the reaction is different.
People get angry when the good news is fully proclaimed.
All Christians have a responsibility to present the full message of the gospel. We stop short of the total proclamation of liberty if we do not stress the necessity of repentance from sin and submission to the Lord Jesus Christ. The religious false front of the people was gone. Jesus had exposed their real heart of unbelief. Jesus was always within easy reach of those who wanted to receive Him, but out of reach of those who rejected Him.