A father came home from work, bone tired. As he kicked back to read the newspaper, his five-year-old son ran in and said, "Daddy, let's play!" The father spotted a big picture of the earth in the paper, cut it up into little pieces, and gave the pieces to his son. "Go put this puzzle together. We'll play when you've finished."

When his son came back five minutes later with the picture taped together, he said, "How did you do that so fast?" The boy said, "It was easy. There's a picture of a man on the back, and when I put the man together, the whole world came together."

It's like that for us. When you get Jesus Christ—the man—right, the whole world comes together. He's the center of everything.

Daniel 9:24 says, "Seventy weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy."

This complex verse lists six things that would be fulfilled by the Messiah. Three of these things, I believe, were fulfilled at the first coming of Jesus; the last three will be fulfilled at His second coming. The first three deal with sin; the others deal with God's kingdom.

The word reconciliation in the verse above means "to cover" or "atone for." This is what Jesus' first coming was all about—He came to fix the sin problem—to deal with it all on the cross and make atonement for it.

Jesus Christ did not come to this earth simply to set a good example for people, or to say nice little things so we could say, "Oh, I admire Jesus. He said so many wonderful things." No, He came to deal with sin.

If our greatest need had been technology, God would have sent us a scientist. If our greatest need had been money, He would have sent us an economist. If our greatest need had been pleasure, He would have sent us an entertainer. But our greatest need was forgiveness, so He sent us a Savior. That's why Jesus came.

It says in Daniel 9:26, "Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself." Jesus didn't die for Himself, and it wasn't a miscarriage of Roman justice. He died for others. He came as an atonement.

Jesus said, "They will see the Son of Man coming…with power and great glory" (Matthew 24:30). We are waiting for that; that is our future. Until then, God is reaching out to the whole world through the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ's atonement. This should motivate us practically. Revelation 13:8 says He is "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." It was all part of God's plan.

I have a question for you: Can you trust your life to the God who can make the kind of accurate, precise predictions we find in Daniel? Will you entrust your future, your family, and your ambitions to this kind of precise God?

That's what He's calling us to do.

So we're left in the position of that little boy holding the pieces of the puzzle. When you put the man together, the whole world comes together.

Put Jesus Christ in His proper place in your life, entrust your life into the hands of this precise God who gave His Son to die on a cross for you, and your whole world will come together.