Daniel 9:26: Christ's Perfect Sacrifice, Our Unshakeable Foundation

Ready to build the witness today? Good to have you. Yesterday, we hit on how God's help grounds us, makes us capable. And that brings us to... Today, being Ash Wednesday, feels like a deep exhale, doesn't it? That stark reminder of dust and what we really are—fragile, finite. I was thinking about building something—a retaining wall, maybe—and the absolute NECESSITY of getting that first course of stone perfectly level. If that initial layer is off, everything that comes after it is just... compromised. You can try to compensate, shim, adjust, but the structural integrity is always in question. It's like that feeling we sometimes carry, isn't it? This internal sense that our own efforts, our own 'good deeds,' are just never quite enough to build something truly lasting, truly RIGHT...

The Briefing

Here’s the thing about that verse... Daniel records this profound truth that cuts right to the heart of our human condition. We are told the Messiah—Jesus—would be 'cut off,' but not for Himself. This is the crucial point. Jesus had no sin, no cause of death in Him. He was the perfect, unblemished sacrifice. Think about it like laying the cornerstone of a massive building. If that stone isn't perfectly plumb and level, if it has even the slightest imperfection, the entire structure built upon it will be compromised. Every subsequent beam, every wall, will lean or crack. We, on our own, are like stones with inherent flaws. Our own efforts—our tears, our offerings, our attempts to 'be good'—are simply not enough to make us truly righteous. They can't pass the divine inspection. But Jesus? He was cut off, not because of His own flaws, but for ours. He became the perfect cornerstone, allowing our shaky human attempts to finally rest on something solid and eternal. That underlying fear we carry—that our foundation isn't quite right, that we aren't quite enough—it dissolves in this truth. The logic of the Kingdom is so different from the logic of the world. Our insufficiency is met with His PERFECTION...