The Big Song You Might Have Missed

Every "greatest songs of all time" list misses one, Steven argues: the Song of Songs, a book of Hebrew love poetry so esteemed that ancient rabbis called it the holiest book in the Bible, even as its meaning has puzzled readers for centuries. Steven walks through the different ways scholars have tried to interpret it, as literal romance, allegory, drama, or collected wedding songs, before settling on a simple image: think of the book like an onion, with layers worth peeling back one at a time. The first layer is the plainest, God takes human love, desire, and intimacy seriously, and gives us poetic language for it. The second layer is analogy: that same passionate longing echoes the way Scripture describes God pursuing his people, as a bridegroom, a faithful partner, a lover who woos. The third and deepest layer is where the sermon lands, that the Song of Songs isn't just about human romance but an invitation into the staggering reality that God doesn't just love us out of obligation, he delights in us, wants us, and longs for us the way lovers long for each other.

Proverbs closes not with a summary statement but with a poem, an acrostic hymn to a woman who works with her hands, cares for her household, invests wisely, and reaches out to the poor. Steven makes the case that this isn't meant as a literal blueprint for wives to imitate, but a portrait of Lady Wisdom herself, the same figure who has called out to readers since the book's opening chapters, now embodied in full. Reading the poem closely, Steven points out something striking for its ancient context: the husband and children barely appear, because the woman herself, wisdom herself, is the point. The sermon's invitation is to take up wisdom as a lifelong partner, however messy or overdue that beginning might feel, trusting that wisdom moves us toward the good of others and becomes a stabilizing force in every area of life. Steven closes by pointing to Jesus as the fullest embodiment of that wisdom, the one in whom the fear of the Lord and the way of God are made complete.

How to Live the Final Chapters of Your One Wild and Precious Life

Steven turns to a question Proverbs, surprisingly, doesn't spend much time on: what does wisdom look like as we grow old? Proverbs, he explains, was written mainly to instruct the young, so the wisdom literature's real material on aging shows up elsewhere, in Genesis's picture of humanity formed from dust, in Ecclesiastes' unflinching honesty about the body's decline, and ultimately in the hope of the resurrection. Steven walks through what he calls the ABCs of Christian hope: our physical bodies will be raised as Jesus' was, heaven and earth will one day be joined together, and we will finally be fully home with God. From there, he offers practical wisdom for every stage of life, the young are called to honor and listen to those who've lived long, while those growing older are called to invest more, not less, in loving God and others, cultivating joy, gratitude, and curiosity along the way. Even as our bodies wear down, Steven points to Paul's promise that we are being renewed inwardly day by day.

A Cheerful Heart Has a Continual Feast

Proverbs keeps returning to the heart, that inner space Scripture treats as the wellspring of everything we think, feel, and become. Steven sits with a handful of proverbs on this theme, landing especially on Proverbs 15:15, a cheerful heart has a continual feast, and unpacks what that image meant in the ancient world: not an everyday meal, but the lavish, overflowing abundance of a wedding or celebration. He's careful to distinguish this from shallow positivity that ignores real pain, pointing instead to a deep, cultivated joy that can coexist with sorrow and hardship. Drawing on Proverbs 4:23's call to guard the heart above all else, Steven offers practical ways to cultivate that kind of joy: surrounding yourself with people doing the same heart work, filling your mind with beauty and goodness, naming what steals your joy, praying for help, and reaching out for support when you're stuck. He points to Jesus himself as the fullest picture of this, a man who had little by way of comfort or possessions yet embodied a continual feast of the heart.

Proverbs 12:18 sets up two ways of speaking: words spoken rashly that cut like a sword, and the tongue of the wise that brings healing. Steven unpacks what that healing speech actually looks like in practice, timely, comforting, controlled, purposeful, and generous, drawing on Proverbs' repeated warnings about babbling fools and the damage careless words can do. But the sermon pushes past technique to the root of it: Jesus taught that our words flow from the abundance of the heart, so the real work isn't just managing what we say but letting God change the heart behind it. Steven offers a simple, practical rhythm for growing in this: pay attention to your words, reflect on them, invite honest feedback from people close to you, and confess when your words have wounded someone. The invitation is to let Jesus, the ultimate model of healing speech, shape how we talk to one another.

Wisdom, Folly, and the State of Our Hearts

Proverbs sets two voices calling out in the same streets: Lady Wisdom, inviting people to her table to eat, drink, and grow in understanding, and Lady Folly, offering an easier, emptier way that promises pleasure without the work. Steven walks through how Proverbs categorizes those who follow folly's voice, the naive who simply haven't learned to read the room, the stubborn who refuse to hear correction, and the mocker who scorns wisdom outright, each requiring a different kind of response. But the sermon turns the lens inward too: these aren't just categories for other people, they're patterns every heart can fall into. The good news is that Jesus is described in Scripture as the wisdom of God fully expressed, meeting us in our foolishness and drawing us back to walk wisely with him.

Lady Wisdom's Great Invitation

Proverbs picks up where Genesis 1-3 leaves off, wrestling with how to navigate a world that God made good but humanity broke by choosing its own way over his. Into that mess steps Lady Wisdom, a figure who appears throughout Proverbs 1-9 not whispering in private but calling out in the streets, inviting anyone who will listen into a quest for a life well lived. Steven walks through what that quest requires: a certain posture of the heart, the willingness to face life's real complexity, and trust that wisdom's path leads somewhere good. Proverbs calls the ones who find it "happy," blessed, flourishing, the same word Jesus uses on the mountainside in the Beatitudes. The invitation is open to everyone: join the quest for wisdom, and discover the life it leads to.

Intro to Scriptures’ Wisdom Literature

What if Sunday mornings were like walking into a studio, a space where creative work happens and something is always being shaped? That's the image Steven opens with as he launches a new series on the wisdom literature of Scripture. He introduces the five collections of wisdom writing in the Bible, Proverbs, Psalms, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Job, and describes wisdom itself as an invisible, creative force woven into the order of the universe, God's design for how life is meant to work. Steven traces that thread all the way to Jesus, who Scripture calls the wisdom of God, the one holding all things together. The invitation is simple: journey toward Jesus with your heart set on navigating the complexities and challenges of this world as wisely as possible.

Every garden has an invisible pulse, an energy that moves through every layer and makes the whole thing come alive. Pastor Steven says the church has one too. It's called grace.

In this final sermon of the PLACE series, the E is Ecosystem, Part 2. Steven maps the layers of a garden onto the life of First Baptist Church: identity as bedrock, values as soil, public worship as the surface where people first encounter the community, and the congregation itself as the greenery, ministering to one another and then moving outward into the city. Underneath it all, grace is the unseen, generous energy of God flowing through every layer. And from Jeremiah 29, two words hold the whole vision together: pray for your city, and seek its shalom. In the welfare of your city, you will find your own.

The Bible opens in a garden and closes in a garden. In between, Jesus is buried in a garden, raised in a garden, and mistaken for the gardener. That's not a coincidence.

In the first of a two-part finale to the PLACE series, Pastor Steven introduces the E: Ecosystem. The word itself comes from the Greek for "home" and the idea of an organized whole. National Geographic calls it a bubble of life. Steven traces garden imagery across the full arc of scripture, from Eden to Psalm 1 to John 15 to Revelation 22, and invites the church to see itself in these same terms: a living, interconnected community rooted in a particular place, where everything and everyone contributes to the flourishing of the whole. Part 2 next week will map that vision directly onto the life of First Baptist Church.