Ross Patterson : Why did Israel reject their Messiah?

The Bible says of Jesus: "He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not." (John 1:10,11) The overwhelming tragedy of the New Testament wasn't that the Jewish people accepted a false Messiah, but rather that the One who is Truth and Light came and Israel rejected Him. God had forewarned Israel in many ways that the Messiah was about to come, yet God's people treated Jesus with indifference and hostility. What was the root cause of this tragedy and what lessons can we learn from this?