DON'T STUB YOUR TOE ON THE BIBLE!

"This precious value, then, is for you who believe,

but for those who disbelieve, 

'The stone which the builders rejected,

This became the very corner stone,'

and 'A stone of stumbling 

and a rock of offense'; for they stumble

because they are disobedient to the word,

and to this doom they were also appointed."

I Peter 2:7-8

(These verses include a quote from Isaiah 21:42, 44)

I've heard it said that the difference between those who make it and those who don't, is that those who do get back up and keep going.  If you stumble, don't just lie there.  If you stumble, don't blame the rock.  You stumble because of disbelief and disobedience to the word.  This precious value is the blood of Christ, the Rock; don't trod it under foot.  

There's a bit of racism here, this stumbling offence, particularly of the Jews, against Christ.  As Adam Clarke puts it, "Because in Him all Jews and Gentiles who believe are united; and because the latter were admitted into the Church, and called by the Gospel to enjoy the same privileges which the Jews, as the peculiar people of God, had enjoyed for two thousand years before; therefore they rejected the Christian religion...This was the true cause why the Jews rejected the Gospel; and they rejected Christ because He did not come as a secular prince.  In the one case He was a stone of stumbling--He was poor, and affected no worldly pomp; in the other He was a rock of offence, for His Gospel called the Gentiles to be a peculiar people whom Jews believed to be everlasting reprobated, and utterly incapable of any spiritual good."

Imagine the great offense taken by the Jewish leaders when Jesus said to their faces, "Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you, and be given to a nation producing the fruit of it.  And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.'  And when the chief priests and Pharisees heard His parables, they understood He was speaking about them." (Matthew 21:43-46)

The Jews have always been about the temple.  This temple requires a cornerstone.  This temple was destroyed as Jesus foretold 70 years after His death and resurrection.  It did break them to pieces and scatter them like dust.  Now Muslims have taken over the temple site and the Jews are left with the wailing wall.