Eliphaz “Comforts” Job

Job
Written By Steve Estes

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Speaker: Steve Estes
Scripture: Job 4-5
May 4, 2025

Sermon Notes

Outline:

1. How to think about hard Bible passages

  • Every Christian should work to understand the Bible as best they can

  • There’s a reason God gave the church pastors and teachers

  • What to do when you feel lost

2. Review of past three chapters

  • The blameless man

  • The adversarial wager

  • The terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad days

  • The three friends

3. Eliphaz’s speech

  • The Temanite

  • The tone

  • The doctrine

  • The vision

  • The advice

4. What Eliphaz got right

5. What Eliphaz got wrong

  • His manner

  • His content

6. Benediction: “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood...to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.” — Revelation 1:5b-6

Steve Estes

Steve Estes has been senior pastor at Brick Lane Community Church in Elverson, Pennsylvania, for over thirty-five years. 

Steve’s books and other writings began with his longtime friendship with Joni Eareckson Tada. As teenagers, they grappled with why God allowed Joni’s paralysis in a swimming accident in the Chesapeake Bay. Steve left for college . . . they kept in touch . . . she liked the style of his letters. When her 1976 autobiography Joni spawned thousands of reader responses, she asked Steve to join her in crafting a follow-up. The result was A Step Further in 1978.

Later, Wycliffe Bible Translators commissioned Steve to write the biography of former college friend Chet Bitterman, a Wycliffe linguist who was kidnapped and murdered by political terrorists in Colombia in 1981. Other books and articles followed, including When God Weeps (with Joni) and A Better December (a giveaway book for non-Christian friends at Christmas.)

Steve was educated at Westminster Theological Seminary, Columbia Bible College and Jerusalem University College in Israel. He has taught homiletics at Westminster and is a board member of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation.

But Steve would say his most significant life achievement was persuading college classmate Verna Stoltzfus to marry him in 1974.  They now have eight children and more grandchildren than can fit in a van.

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Jesus and the Children
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Eye-Opening Light: Seeing through Shame