"A tremendous resource for those wanting to study and teach the Bible with an understanding of how the gospel is woven throughout Scripture." ―Bryan Chapell, Pastor, Grace Presbyterian Church
The Knowing the Bible series is a resource designed to help Bible readers better understand and apply God’s Word.
These 12-week studies lead participants through books of the Bible and are made up of four basic components: (1) reflection questions help readers engage the text at a deeper level; (2) “Gospel Glimpses” highlight the gospel of grace throughout the book; (3) “Whole-Bible Connections” show how any given passage connects to the Bible’s overarching story of redemption, culminating in Christ; and (4) “Theological Soundings” identify how historic orthodox doctrines are taught or reinforced throughout Scripture.
With contributions from an array of influential pastors and church leaders, these gospel-centered studies will help Christians see and cherish the message of God’s grace on every page of the Bible.
This 12-week study invites us to take an honest look at the agony and pain experienced by Job, which are immediately relevant to the suffering we all experience while on earth. However, it takes us beyond the suffering and into the sovereignty and trustworthiness of God in the midst of our trials.
Eric Ortlund helps us see God's purposes in suffering as we look ahead to the restoration of all things in the new creation.

Job: A 12-Week Study (Knowing the Bible)

Religion & Spirituality

Ortlund, Eric

Christian Books & Bibles

Crossway

Why Suffering Exists: God’s Purpose for Pain in the Life of Job and throughout Scripture 
Why does God allow suffering? The pain of suffering can be overwhelmingly mysterious, but the Bible does provide answers. Throughout Scripture, God allows trials in order to accomplish specific purposes in the lives of his people. When faced with suffering they experience spiritual growth; repentance from sin; or, as in the Old Testament story of Job, the chance to demonstrate devotion to God in the face of inexplicable agony. 
In Suffering Wisely and Well, Eric Ortlund explores different types of trials throughout Scripture, revealing the spiritual purpose for each and reassuring readers with God’s promise of restoration. The majority of the book focuses on Job, one of the most well-known yet misunderstood stories of suffering. Ortlund thoughtfully analyzes the text chapter by chapter, including the doubt of Job’s friends, God’s response to Job’s questions, and the meaning behind important imagery including references to Leviathan and Behemoth. Suffering Wisely and Well shows readers how to deepen their relationship with God during painful experiences in their own lives and how to comfort others who are hurting. Explores Lament and Redemption in Scripture: Helps readers understand how to interpret suffering from a Christian perspective Applicable: Each chapter ends with a “What Have We Learned?” summary Biblical Advice on Grief and Support: Teaches Christians how to avoid blame or legalism when addressing the suffering of others

Suffering Wisely and Well: The Grief of Job and the Grace of God

One of the most challenging passages in the Old Testament book of Job comes in the Lord's second speech (40-41). The characters and the reader have waited a long time for the Lord to speak--only to read what is traditionally interpreted as a long description of a hippopotamus and crocodile (Behemoth and Leviathan). The stakes are very high: is God right to run the world in such a way that allows such terrible suffering for one of his most loyal servants? Is Job right to keep trusting God in the midst of much criticism? But it is difficult for modern readers to avoid a sense of frustrating anticlimax as the book ends.Eric Ortlund argues that Behemoth and Leviathan are better understood as symbols of cosmic chaos and evil--that a supernatural interpretation fits better exegetically within the book of Job and within Job's ancient Middle Eastern context. It also helps modern readers to appreciate the satisfying climax the narrator intended for the book: in describing Behemoth and Leviathan, God is directly engaging with Job's complaint about divine justice, implying to Job that he understands the evil at loose in his creation better than Job does, is in control of it, and will one day destroy it.In this New Studies in Biblical Theology volume, Ortlund considers different interpretations of the Lord's second speech and their potential exegetical and pastoral weaknesses. He shows how a supernatural interpretation of Behemoth and Leviathan puts modern readers in a position to appreciate the reward of Job's faith (and ours) as we endure in trusting God while living in an unredeemed creation.Addressing key issues in biblical theology, the works comprising New Studies in Biblical Theology are creative attempts to help Christians better understand their Bibles. The NSBT series is edited by D. A. Carson, aiming to simultaneously instruct and to edify, to interact with current scholarship and to point the way ahead.

Piercing Leviathan: God's Defeat of Evil in the Book of Job (Volume 56) (New Studies in Biblical Theology)

IVP Academic

Ben Leventhal worked as a psychiatrist for years, but he’s never met a patient like Alex, who can see the secrets of other patients and holds a hypnotic power over them. He’s never heard a story like hers, either, about a ritual she was forced to participate in as a child which infected her with an otherworldly power, and a cult trying to use that power to destroy the world. But when the power inside Alex infects him, Ben sees things he never imagined: the writhing chaos beneath normal reality and the horrors that live there, the hollowness of the lives around him, and the end of the universe, approaching faster than anyone suspects. And beyond it all, a searing, unquiet luminosity, an unbound circle of sucking vortices, a pure fiery presence of light—both beyond the universe and inhabiting him. 
Hideous fiery light. 
I Am the Doorway is dark fantasy in the Lovecraftian tradition of outer unknown forces, strange rituals, and madness, combined in new ways as reality shatters and chaos walks among us.

I Am the Doorway

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Nielsen

Not just your garden-variety zombie apocalypse... "It was a week ago when it happened. Exactly a week when I heard the stomping on the front porch. I remember it sounded like someone was drunk. I opened the door and it was my neighbor. She lunged at me." Oz, a former professor driven to the brink of madness by a tragedy he cannot face, begins to notice that the people around him are acting strangely. They're eating each other. And they're scraping at his door. Fleeing south, Oz and a motley crew of survivors begin to notice that this isn't the zombie apocalypse they'd seen in countless movies and books. These creatures seem somehow 'closer' to the Earth, yet, perversely, somehow deader, less human, than even zombies are meant to be. The creatures are transfixed by the Sun, and they transform, their faces peeling back in short tentacles until they uncannily resemble flowers. And these zombies can't be stopped. Hack off a limb or a head and it re-joins or just grows back, like the toughest plants. The Dead have a global leader, a purpose - beyond that of just eating any remaining humans. And the seven survivors, led reluctantly by Oz, discover that they have a central role to play in the macabre new order of 'life' on Earth. Dead Petals is a different species of zombie tale. Apocalypse, Rapture and the transformation of reality, all sprouting from the same seed.

Dead Petals - An Apocalypse

Fingerpress