Christmas Eve 2025

These past few summers, my wife and I have made a decision to start taking the vacations with our kids now that we were hoping to one day be able to afford. We decided we’re just gonna do ‘em now.

Which is kinda risky; spending a bit more money than maybe we feel comfortable spending.

But we haven’t regretted it.

(We also have eaten only ramen since 2022; but that’s ok—there’s a lot of different flavors.)

This past summer we took our (2) kids on a vacation to Europe. And one of our stops was the Louvre in Paris.

And as a pastor who went to seminary, one of the things I was most excited to see in the Louvre was this exhibit:

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Show pics of Darius Friezes

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These are friezes. They are massive stone wall art pieces, both depicting lions. And they would have decorated that halls in the palace of Darius I, or Darius the Great—who was a Persian king who lived around 500 years before Jesus was born.

Darius is referred to by name in the Bible by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, as well as by the scribe, Ezra.

And I just think it’s cool to be able to see the same exact thing as people in the Bible saw. It reminds me that I’m not just reading a book of fairy tales; this stuff happened in the real world.

Each of those (3) people I mentioned have Old Testament books of the Bible named after them. And so in the book of Ezra, we learn that Ezra was a “scribe skilled in the law of Moses”—kinda like a legislator with a law background. He walked the halls of that same palace just a generation after Darius.

Ezra was a Jew—an Israeli. But he lived during a time where Israel had no borders and no sovereignty because they had been conquered, first by Assyria, then by Babylon.

But then Babylon was conquered by the Persians, who were then conquered by the Grecians, who were then conquered by the Romans. (Just a little history lesson for you at Christmas. My gift to you. And I know you didn’t ask for that, but… just trying to give you some good practice for how it might go for you on Christmas morning.)

Now, much like when a big corporation acquires a smaller one, these empires would take inventory of their newly conquered people, identify the best and the brightest, and then reassign them (so to speak) somewhere else in their government.

Ezra was one of those types. He was smart. He could read and write. He could think and analyze. And he was great at giving good advice.

In fact, Ezra was just one in a long line of conquered Jews who served in the royal courts of whichever empire was in charge.

Fifty years before Ezra, another smart Jewish person named Daniel served first in the Babylonian and then Persian courts.

Think about that for a second:

You’re so obviously smart and valuable that two different and warring ruling parties keep you in office.

If that name sounds familiar to you, Daniel’s the guy that got thrown into a den of lions (like the ones we saw on the friezes) because he refused to pray to the Persian king as though he were a god. But God miraculously spares him—which, as you can imagine, created quite the impression on the rest of the Persian administrators, paving the way for a long line of future Jewish administrators (like Ezra) in future empires.

People like Daniel and Ezra literally seemed to have a divine touch—something kings were constantly trying to acquire.

In fact, let me share a story of how this played out in Daniel’s life. In Daniel 5, we get the story of a Babylonian ruler named Belshazzar who is trying to interpret a divine inscription. It’s kind of a freaky story:

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Daniel 5:5–6 “Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his legs became weak and his knees were knocking.”

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I imagine that Belshazzar’s palace wall probably looked a lot like those friezes that are hanging in the Louvre today. But on one of those, a disembodied human hand wrote… something. And nobody knew what it meant.

So here’s what Belshazzar did:

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Daniel 5:7 “The king summoned the enchanters, astrologers and diviners. Then he said to these wise men of Babylon, “Whoever reads this writing and tells me what it means will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around his neck, and he will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom.”

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These enchanters, astrologers, and diviners are referred to as “wise men.” They advised the Babylonian and Persian kings right alongside Jewish transplants like Daniel and Ezra.

But there was a pretty stark difference:

These so-called “wise men” would try and look at signs in the sky (like astrologers) or utilize divination and sorcery to make their advice seem as though it was divine guidance.

But their Jewish counterparts—like the story we began reading in Daniel—would hear from the living God directly. And as such, their advice would be proven true. Time and time again. Daniel was the only one who could interpret that inscription on the wall. Because God himself wrote it and told Daniel what it meant.

And these “wise men” got a front-row seat to it all.

Magi from the East

Now, fast forward with me in history 500 years—and they’re about to get yet another front-row seat to another man of God:

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Matthew 2:1-2, KJV Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.

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Wise men | from the east | who were familiar with Jewish prophecy | and felt like the stars were aligned for that prophecy to be fulfilled.

This is from the King James Version of the Bible. In the translation we use a lot around here at Prairie Lakes, the New International Version, it refers to these “wise men” as “Magi.” Short for magicians.

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“Wise men” = “Magi”

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But it’s the same group of people. It’s the enchanters, astrologers, diviners, magi, “wise men…” royal advisors from the eastern kingdoms of old who, for 500 years had brushed shoulders with the Daniels and Ezras of the world—

These Israeli foreign transplants who were plucked away from a land about a month’s journey west, right next to the great sea,

Who claimed that there was only one true God,

And that one day this God would come to earth,

In the flesh,

Born in the hometown of Israel’s greatest king, David, the little town of Bethlehem,

Who would grow up to be not only the king of the Jews,

But the king of the whole world.

Never Too Far Off

Now: even after all of that background, you still might not have a sense of just how scandalous these two verses about Jesus’ birth in Matthew really are. Because the rest of the Bible has nothing but really bad things to say about these types of people—these magicians—and what they did.

Listen to what Jewish law in Deuteronomy says about them:

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Deuteronomy 18:9–12 “When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who… practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord…

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In fact, the kingdom of Babylon in the East becomes a type or a recurring symbol in the Bible:

From the tower of Babel in Genesis, to Babylon the Great in Revelation,

These Magi hailed from the place that symbolized human power organized in rebellion against God, pretending to be able to see like God sees and know what God knows, passing off their advice as though speaking in God’s name.

Detestable people doing detestable things.

(Pause.)

And so right here | at the beginning of Jesus’ story you have these detestable people from the demonic capital of the world,

These Magi from the belly of the beast,

Somehow right in the epicenter of God’s most dramatic act to save the world:

They have a front row seat to their redemption in the flesh.

Get this now:

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Deuteronomy tells us how far from God the Magi were.

Matthew tells us how far God’s willing to go for them.

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God had been planting seeds for 500 years with these Magi.

He used the evils of humanity like war and deportation and oppression to plant his people and his truth right next to the people who were selling lies in his name.

In the place and among the people who utterly rejected him, he built an awareness of his promise to one day send a Messiah.

You couldn’t get any further away from God than these Magi were—

And yet here they are,

Right in the middle of God’s story,

Because of the witness of Daniel and Ezra and others,

And because of how he literally aligned the stars.

Just think about that for a second:

He knew they wouldn’t make a pilgrimage to the Temple.

They weren’t showing up at the Tabernacle.

These people aren’t going to darken the doors of the church. They aren’t going to walk in and hear his message.

So what does God do:

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God doesn’t wait to be found. He goes to where they’re already looking.

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He didn’t wait for them to make their pilgrimage. They made their pilgrimage because he wasn’t content to wait.

He came to their world. Spoke in their language.

Astrology isn’t even a real thing—but it was the thing that they could understand. It was where they were already looking.

And this is one of God’s patterns, by the way:

Not waiting for you to find him.

Not waiting for you to hang around him long enough to speak his language.

Not waiting for you to know enough to understand him.

Instead:

Like the stars in the sky that these Magi were charting,

He’s already at work in your story. Right where you are now; who you are now.

How? Well…

Maybe you have a Daniel or an Ezra in your story. Some God-follower planted somewhere in your life or your history, maybe in your family, or your neighborhood, or your workplace. In fact, maybe they were the ones who invited you here today. God has a pattern of not waiting for you to find him, but instead sending his people to where you are.

Or maybe you’ve got something you’re walking through. Maybe it’s a blessing or maybe it’s really hard—either way, it’s where you’re focusing; it’s where you’re looking. God has a way of getting your attention in whatever you’re attending to. The blessings come from him; the tough stuff reminds you of how much you need him.

If he can use a fake science to draw detestable people doing detestable things near to him…

If he’s willing to plan and plot for 500 years so that a group of Babylonian sorcerers walk west for a month to Bethlehem…

Well, then that means that there’s nothing you’ve done that is so detestable to God that he would ever write you off.

There’s nothing so wrong or so broken with you that God couldn’t love you.

There’s no place you can go where he can’t reach you.

No matter who you are, where you’ve been, what you’ve done, or what’s been done to you:

God can reach you. He can show himself to you. He can lead you on a journey back to him—

And he probably already is!

Because He. Loves. You.

He’s the God who uses stars to reach the astrologers.

He knew from the day he first hung those stars in the sky that one day he’d use those same stars to lead those who were far off back to him.

He’s not waiting for you to find him. He’s where you’re already looking.

He’s in your story already—so that you might be a part of his.

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