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Scriptural Precedent for Hope for Widespread Revival
I’ve been doing a slow read-thru of Scripture and I’m in 2 Chronicles right now. Chronicles has been a very encouraging read (that was the author’s intent) and I ran across something over the last couple mornings that I wanted to share.
The story of Hezekiah as told by the chronicler has made me very excited about what God can do on a national or widespread scale. It’s especially encouraging in its stark contrast with the story preceding it, the story of Ahaz, Hezekiah’s father.
In 2Ch 28, we’re told of Ahaz, a very wicked king. He brought great trouble on all of Judah with his wickedness. It’s a dark chapter and not an easy chapter to read.
Chapter 29 starts the account of Hezekiah. In his first month as king, Hezekiah began to undo a lot of the evil that his father had done, and he brought back proper worship of God.
The last verse of chapter 29 struck me:
“Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced because God had provided for the people, for the thing came about suddenly.”
Under Ahaz the people worshipped false gods in extremely abominable ways. But within a very short period of time, God turned the people around.
But not only in Judah….
The next chapter tells us that Hezekiah invited Israel to join Judah in true worship. We learn from 30:10-12 that most people laughed and mocked King Hezekiah’s message to them, but some humbled themselves and went to Jerusalem to join in the worship.
“So the runners passed from city to city through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, as far as Zebulun; but they laughed at them and mocked them. Nevertheless some from Asher, Manasseh, and Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem. Also the hand of God was on Judah to give them singleness of heart to obey the command of the king and the leaders, at the word of the Lord.”
And here’s 2Ch 30:25-27.
“The whole assembly of Judah, and the priests and the Levites, and the whole assembly that came out of Israel, and the sojourners who came out of the land of Israel, and the sojourners who lived in Judah, rejoiced. So there was great joy in Jerusalem, for since the time of Solomon the son of David king of Israel there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem. Then the priests and the Levites arose and blessed the people, and their voice was heard, and their prayer came to his holy habitation in heaven.”
I pray for revival in our nation, in our state, and in our local area. Passages like this cause me to believe that God can answer that prayer. It’s not unprecedented that God would cause widespread revival among people who were previously so wicked and set against him. And prayer, I believe, is the primary tool/weapon to bring that about, because only God can do that. We may give some credit to Hezekiah, but more than once we see in 2Ch 29 & 30 that it was God that brought about the widespread repentance.
And this is not the only example we have in the Old Testament. Look at the revival in 2Ch 15 under the reign of King Asa:
“They swore an oath to the LORD with a loud voice and with shouting and with trumpets and with horns. And all Judah rejoiced over the oath, for they had sworn with all their heart and had sought him with their whole desire, and he was found by them, and the LORD gave them rest all around.”
And in Jonah 3, when Nineveh, a very evil city, repented, God spared them. Here’s Jonah 3:5, 10.
“The people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them…. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.”
God is fully capable of rescuing America, Pennsylvania, south-central PA, or whatever place and people he desires. And we know that it would be fully within his character to do so. So, despite how bleak and grim things look right now wherever you are in the world, let’s keep beseeching the Lord of lords, the God of all love, the great Father of all mercies, to spare us by transforming hearts on a large scale. Of course, all 3 of the examples above started with the transformation of a king who then led the people in national repentance. I don’t think God needs a repentant ruler to save a people, but it does seem to be the pattern. So, let’s pray all the more earnestly for either (1) transformed hearts among our current leaders—national, state, local—or (2) new leadership that will fear God and point the people to our Lord.
Regardless of whether or not God decides to answer our prayers favorably, we must not allow our obedience to him and our service to the Kingdom to be contingent upon that favorable outcome. We are still under the joy-filled mandate of Christ to worship God at all times and to make disciples of all people.
It’s my hope and prayer that this is an encouragement to you! It has been to me! We have a solid hope that cannot be removed or shaken. Christ is the solid Rock on which we are made able to stand.
Project Phase 3 — The Exodus from Egypt
The Bible explains God’s Master Plan of Redemption, a project plan designed and executed by God to redeem fallen mankind to himself. And this project plan, like most project plans, is divided into phases to be executed in order, each phase building on the previous and bringing the plan closer and closer to its completion.
We saw in the first phase, Creation and Fall, that God created everything including mankind. He placed Adam and Eve in a perfect environment and gave them authority over the creation to run it as God’s managers. But man decided to rebel and that started a downward spiral of sin and disaster. But God didn’t abandon his creation; this plan was put into action.
In the second phase, Abrahamic Covenant, God chose one family to be his envoy to the world, to reveal to the world who God is and what he’s like. He chose Abraham and made a covenant with him. This covenant, among other things, was designed to bless the peoples of the world with redemption through a descendant of Abraham (whom we later learn is Jesus).
3In the third phase, The Exodus from Egypt, God takes the next step in this plan. At the end of phase 2, the chosen descendants of Abraham were doing well in Egypt. We learn in the beginning of the book of Exodus that this family multiplied greatly and became a huge group of people. God’s plan is to bring this group to the land that he’d promised Abraham. This was the new nation of Israel, a nation that God would use to carry forth his Master Plan of Redemption.
The heart of man is still a problem, however. Sin is still a huge factor in the world in rebellion against God. While the people of Jacob (renamed Israel) multiplied greatly in Egypt, the Egyptian government, led by evil pharaohs, decided to enslave them and use them for forced labor.
But God is working his project plan and nothing will prevent him from completing it. This phase is designed to reveal himself in a way not seen before and to free the people he’s chosen. It will result in his people being brought out of slavery with wealth and celebration.
Exodus 6:1–6 — The LORD said to Moses, “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for with a strong hand he will send them out, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land.”
God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant. Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.”
Exodus 7:1–5 — The LORD said to Moses, “…. You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of his land. But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment. The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them.”
Exodus 12:40–41 — The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years. At the end of 430 years, on that very day, all the hosts of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt.
Exodus 12:51 — And on that very day the LORD brought the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their hosts.
God brought his people out of Egypt as he’d planned. The next logical step would be to bring them to the land that he’d promised to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, but he first needs to formalize them as a nation and form a covenant with them: he as their God and they as his people. In this way, when they’ve been established in the land, they can be a light to the nations to bless them with the knowledge of God. That covenant, the Mosaic Covenant, is what the next phase is all about.
Project Phase 2 — Abrahamic Covenant
In the first phase—Creation and Fall—we saw that God created everything including mankind and he placed Adam and Eve in a perfect environment with everything they needed to live a life full of joy, meaning, and wonderful relationship with God and each other. But they disobeyed God. This started a downward spiral of evil and rebellion against God. The heart of mankind was corrupted and man could (and can) do nothing to correct it.
But God had a plan to redeem his people, bringing them back into a wonderful relationship. That plan had something to do with a descendant of Eve who would defeat evil. Though there have been a couple promising prospects, every person so far has failed to live up to this promise.
Even so, God has continued to be gracious to his creation, showering them with many blessings and preventing them from sinking too far into their rebellion.
2The second phase in God’s Master Plan of Redemption covers Genesis 12-50 and deals with a man named Abraham and his family. God decides to use this one family to carry out his plans. The details of how this will turn out are not clear at this point, but God makes a series of promises to Abraham regarding, among other things, a child that he and his wife will have despite their physical inability.
As in phase 1, we see ample evidence of the corruption of the hearts of all mankind, including Abraham and his very dysfunctional family.
- On two separate occasions Abraham claims that Sarah is his sister instead of his wife in order to save his own life, this despite the promise of God that he would have a son, something that can’t happen if he dies.
- Isaac, Abraham’s son, pulls the same trick with his wife, Rebekah, claiming her as his sister in Gerar for fear of the men there.
- Because of corrupt hearts, brothers Jacob and Esau were at odds for almost their entire lives. Jacob cheating Esau out of his birthright and their father’s blessing (the latter by deceiving his old, blind father), among other things.
- Jacob’s children (by four different women) are themselves deceitful with corrupt hearts. They plan to kill Joseph, Jacob’s favorite child, but then sell him into slavery and report that he’d been destroyed by wild animals.
- Simeon and Levi, through deception and violence, kill all the men of the city of Hamor and then the other sons of Jacob plunder the goods of that city because of their sister’s defilement.
- And more and more…
Despite all the failures that continue to pile up, seemingly without end, God continues to be faithful to his people. He continues to rescue and pour out blessings on mankind. And he continues to carry out his plan to redeem a people for himself. In fact, this phase contains one of the most important elements of this project plan. He makes a covenant with Abraham that, through him and through his descendants, God would rescue a people for himself through whom he would bless all the nations.
Genesis 12:1–3 — The LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
This promise was ratified in chapter 15, repeated to Abraham’s son, Isaac, in chapter 26 and to Isaac’s son Jacob in chapter 28. It is through this promise that Jesus dies for the sin of the world much later. If you are a follower of Christ, you are a beneficiary of this covenant. As we go along, we’ll see that the rest of God’s plan hinges on this covenant.
Another thing that God tells Abraham is that his many descendants will end up enslaved in a foreign land, but that God would bring them out of that land many in number and in possessions to be a nation of God’s people to shine as a light to the other nations.
The rest of this phase shows more of the same, but don’t treat it as just repeated information. Read it carefully, with the goal of understanding what’s going on as it unfolds. Note the ample evidence of hard, corrupt hearts and that of God’s mercy and blessings. God even takes the evil done by people and uses it to further his plan and flood his people with blessing.
He still does that today!
When we get to the next phase: The Exodus from Egypt, we’ll see how God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob begin to unfold. God will bring his people out of slavery and will begin to teach them how to be the people of God in the sight of the nations around them.
Project Phase 1 — Creation and Fall
1In the first phase of The Plan (a Bible reading plan; see details here), we see the foundational beginning of everything in our physical universe.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. — Genesis 1:1
This phase starts by revealing to us that God created it all. He created the stars, the land and waters, the sun and the moon, the creatures that swim in the waters, fly through the air, walk on the ground, and swing through the trees. He created the flowers, the trees, the grass, the bushes, shrubs, and vines. He created all the beautiful, odd, and fascinating animals. He created the mountains, the valleys, the deserts, the plains, and the rivers, seas, oceans, swamps, and lakes. He created all the majestic marvels of the heavens that declare his glory. And it was all good!
And we see that he created it all with great care in order to provide a special environment for his primary and most special creation: mankind.
It also shows us that he had a wonderful relationship with Adam and Eve, the humans that he created and placed in the environment, the Garden of Eden. Over and over again throughout the creation story in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 God reveals to us what’s good, even what’s very good.
The fact that God created everything tells us there is purpose and meaning to this world and to our lives. He delighted in his relationship with his creation. He made a habit of walking and communicating with his creation in the cool of the day. He blessed them with the bounty of the Garden and with the bounty of each other. All that was there was theirs to enjoy. He even lovingly gave them joyous work to do, to work the garden and to keep it. And he gave them boundaries, one in particular: they mustn’t eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Despite the tremendous provision and the bounteous supply, the attention of these first humans was drawn to the one prohibition. The serpent, in obvious rebellion against God, deceived Eve into disobeying God’s command.
When the woman saw that the [Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil] was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. — Genesis 3:6
After God had made abundantly clear what was good, Eve decided to define good for herself. She decided that the prohibition was good when God had already revealed to her that it was not good. So, the innocence of our most distant ancestors was lost in that moment and they were cast out of the Garden, under the curse of sin.
The rest of this phase, Genesis chapters 3-11, shows us the disastrous results of this fall from grace. We see the character of the human race starts spiraling downward. Cain kills Abel, Lamech boasts of his depravity, mankind makes God’s good world a huge mess.
The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. — Genesis 6:5–6
So we see next that God washes the world clean of the evil of humanity by flooding it with water, killing every person on earth along with every animal that breathed air, preserving only righteous Noah and his family.
As the reader, we might see a glimmer of hope here. Noah is righteous and it’s his family that’s preserved to repopulate the world. But even after all this, we see that the downward spiral of sin isn’t stopped, but continues. One of the first things Noah does after the flood is plant a vineyard, make wine, and get completely drunk. He passes out naked in his tent and his son Ham “saw the nakedness of his father” (Genesis 9:22). The Scripture doesn’t make clear exactly what happened, but it was apparently very dishonoring to his father.
The Creation and Fall phase ends with the story of the descendants of Noah ignoring God’s command to spread out on the earth in dependence on him. Instead, they decide to build a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, making a name for themselves. This is a deliberate attempt to establish self-sufficiency apart from any dependence on God. God scatters them across the face of the earth by confusing their languages.
This phase is a wonderful, and then a bleak and graphic description of the creation and fall of Adam and Eve and the awful results of sin in the world and in the hearts of all mankind.
But even in the bleakness we see God’s loving intervention throughout.
- He gives Cain a way of redemption for himself, calling him back to righteousness, even after he killed his brother, and he marks him for protection.
- He gives Adam and Even another son, Seth, who produces a line of humans who will seek after God. As we go along through The Plan, we’ll see how it’s through Seth’s line that God will fulfill the promise of redemption that he gives in Genesis 3:15 (see below).
- Amidst the evil of all of mankind, Noah was found to be righteous and God rescued mankind through Noah’s family on the ark and then makes a covenant with all life on earth that he will never again destroy the world with a flood, the rainbow being the sign of that covenant.
- He provides a way for humanity to help quell the evil in society by establishing human government.
- He did not allow humanity to remain in rebellion against him. We see this act of grace when he banished Adam and Eve from the Garden, preventing them from eating of the Tree of Life and thereby living perpetually in a state of rebellion. We also see it in the confusion of the languages at the Tower of Babel, preventing mankind from remaining united against him.
- And in Genesis 3:15, immediately after the sin of Adam and Eve, God announces a project plan to completely redeem mankind from his rebellious heart: God’s Master Plan of Redemption.
God speaking to the serpent (Satan):
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. — Genesis 3:15
This is a foundational section of Scripture as all the rest flows from this. Without an understanding of this phase of God’s project plan, the remaining will not fit together and there will be no clear understanding of why God does what he does from this point forward.
From here, we will enter into the next phase of God’s Master Plan of Redemption: the Abrahamic Covenant. We will see how God uses one man and his family to execute this divine project plan to rescue his people from their hardened and rebellious hearts.
The Plan v2
There have been a few changes to the The Plan since it first came out last month. You can download the new version by using the link in the left sidebar.
The changes center mainly around Job, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs. I grouped them into one phase—Wisdom of Israel—and placed that phase between the Pre-Exilic Prophets and The Plan So Far phases.
I originally had Job after Genesis as it most likely was written and set very early in Bible history, but after studying it a bit, it looks like the author may have taken deliberate steps to remove the story in his book from any particular historical or chronological setting. So, rather than try to fit it into a historical setting, I thought it best to simply group it with the other wisdom books of the OT. In The Plan, that includes Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs.
Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes were placed after Samuel-Kings because they seem to have been written during Solomon’s reign. (In The Plan, they were ordered SoS and then Ecc based on the probable time of writing; the order has now been changed to the biblical order: Ecc and SoS.) But, like Job, their historical settings are unimportant to their purposes, so we should not place them on the timeline of God’s Plan based on historical setting.
So, if we’re not going to concern ourselves with the historical settings of these three books (as the historical settings have nothing to do with the primary points of the authors of these books), we should decide their placement based on something else.
The Wisdom of Israel phase is now placed where it is—between the Pre-Exilic Prophets and The Plan So Far phases—to be a type of break in the story line. We are well into God’s Master Plan of Redemption by the time we get to this point. So, let’s take a break from the timeline and look at these wisdom books as they also tell us about God’s Plan. Once we’re done with our break, we return to the timeline with a recap of where we are: The Plan So Far.
You’ll find that there is also a cover sheet to The Plan. This cover sheet gives a simple one-page view of The Plan. We’re basically reading one psalm and one proverb, then the rest of the Bible in a particular order. That’s it. Simple.
On the By the way… posting of The Plan, there are added explanations for each of the 17 phases of The Plan. There were a few notes in there for some of the phases, but I though it might be helpful to get a brief overview of all of them, one paragraph at a time.
As before, I hope you find The Plan useful as you dive into God’s Master Plan of Redemption everyday.
Psalm 119 — Broken Out
In all the Bible, there is no other single work that praises God for his word more than the 119th psalm. Some of the most popular verses in Scripture on Scripture are in this psalm.
Psalm 119:11
I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.Psalm 119:18
Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.Psalm 119:71
It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.Psalm 119:105
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
There is great encouragement in reading the entire psalm—all 176 verses—in one sitting, and I encourage you to do that from time to time. There is also great blessing in taking it one statement at a time. I mentioned in my post on Proverbs how reading an entire chapter of Proverbs can be too much of a good thing all at once. Sometimes I feel the same about Psalm 119.
You see, Psalm 119 is a Hebrew acrostic poem. This means that it uses the letters of the Hebrew alphabet as a guide. Most Hebrew acrostic poems have 22 lines or verses, each starting with a letter of the alphabet arranged in alphabetical order. In the case of Psalm 119, there are 8 lines per letter. Most of the verses are individual proverbial statements, though some proverbial statements span multiple verses. It is useful to look at each one individually, so I’ve broken it out into its individual proverbial statements for easier study. What I like to do is take one statement per day, write it out, mark it up, and absorb it that way.
If this sounds interesting to you, you can download it here. I also encourage you to break out Psalm 119 yourself; you may break it up differently than I have. Either way, it should be a wonderful study.
The Plan — A Bible Reading Plan
I am a firm believer that regularly reading the Bible is a vital part of every Christian’s day. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, yet you’re not reading the Bible regularly—and by regularly I mean daily—then you are missing out on the blessings of knowing God more intimately and you’re missing out on the growth you need as a Christian. Without those things, you can never hope to be effective as an ambassador of Christ.
2Co 5:20. We are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us: “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”
The Bible says that if you are a true follower of Christ, you are an ambassador of Christ; you’re either a good one or a bad one, but you are an ambassador if you are a true Christian. As an ambassador, you are tasked with taking the message of Christ (the Gospel) to those who need to hear it. And everything you need in order to be a good ambassador is in the Bible.
2Ti 3:16-17. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
So, are you confident that you are spending enough time in Scripture? Are you reading the Bible daily with a goal and with direction? Are you reading in an organized manner? Do you have an understanding of the big-picture message of the entire Bible? Do you know what each book is about and how each book fits into that big-picture message?
A new Bible reading plan, not-so-creatively called The Plan, is ready for your use if you’d like it. You can read more about it here.
A Psalm a Day…
In the next few weeks I’ll be posting a Bible reading plan that I like to use (It was finished on September 16, 2020 — it’s posted here). I like to use it because I’ve designed it myself to fit how I want to read the Bible—keeping the overall story in view and maintaining the flow of thought of each author. One thing about it that may seem odd, though, is that it does not include Psalms or Proverbs. Uh oh! I can hear the gasps now:
WHAT?! How can you leave out Psalms and Proverbs? How can you leave out any part of the Bible??
I completely agree with you. No Bible reading plan should exclude any part of the Bible. So why would I design a Bible reading plan without Psalms and Proverbs? Ultimately it has to do with the evolution of this particular plan along with my own Bible reading habits.
Let me explain.
For a long time I’ve been in the habit of reading one psalm a day and also reading from Proverbs each day as part of my morning routine. This has taken different forms over the years (you can read about the evolution of my reading of Proverbs here), but within the last couple years it’s been reading one psalm per day with a couple exceptions:
- Psalms 42 and 43 were originally one single psalm, so I like to read them together.
- Psalm 119 is particularly long. While I usually don’t like to break up sections of text for fear of losing the flow of thought, Psalm 119 can be easily broken up. It’s an acrostic psalm (where each line or each section starts with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet) with each verse or section of verses not dependent on the others. So, I broke it up into 16-verse sections to read over 11 days.
I like to read the day’s psalm a couple times and make sure I understand what it’s about. I then write down a 1- or 2-sentence summary of the psalm and perhaps an application or two. This helps solidify it in my mind.
Since this reading through Psalms is not a plan that’s mapped to a time frame, I simply go back to Psalm 1 after I finish Psalm 150, and I start it all over again as a perpetual plan. It’s not dependent on a calendar.
So, while my Bible reading plan, called The Plan, does not include Psalms and Proverbs in the plan itself, it does include them as additional readings per day. I have explanatory notes here which should make it clearer.
Regardless of the Bible reading plan you use, I trust you are reading the Bible—all of it—regularly. And just as a suggestion, I think it would be a valuable practice to read a psalm a day as part of your daily Bible intake.
If you’re interested in a PDF of how I read Psalms, you can download it here.
If you want to read about The Plan and download the materials for it, you can find it here.
How We Read Proverbs — Too Much of a Good Thing?
I remember from my earliest days as a Christian it was told to me that a great way to be in the Bible’s wisdom literature is to read a chapter of Proverbs every day. By doing that, you’d read through the book every month. There are 31 chapters in Proverbs and you can easily read a chapter each month based on the date. For a long time, that’s what I did.
But I ran into a small problem with that. No, I’m not talking about what to do with chapter 31 on months that only have 30 days (not to mention February’s proverbial deficit). I’m talking about reading over 30 individual proverbs, often on very unrelated topics, in one sitting and expecting to remember them. Sure, there would always be one or two that would stand out to me and have a positive impact on my life, but there would also be so many that wouldn’t. In fact, the more I read Proverbs, chapter at a time, the more those same proverbs would stand out to me and the more the others would habitually be rushed over and unnoticed.
I then ran across something by Greg Koukl of Stand To Reason. What he likes to do is read either the first half or the second half of a chapter depending on whether your in an even or odd month of the year. So, you’re reading half a chapter instead of a whole chapter. His explanation and his thinking on this is sound and persuasive, so I did that for a few years until I realized I was still running into the same issue. There was just too much goodness at once, much of it being lost in the process.
I decided that if I was going to read the Proverbs with the goal of understanding (this is how we should read anything), then I needed to take one proverb—not a chapter, one proverb—write it out and mark it up (for the short ones), and then summarize it, praying all along for wisdom and application.
Though most of the proverbs in Proverbs are single-verse proverbs that stand on their own, there are some chapters in Proverbs that are not single-verse proverbs, but are complete proverbs in themselves (examples being chapters 2, 5, 7, and 9). There are others that are single proverbs that cover multiple verses (like 22:17-21, 23:29-35, and 31:10-31). The only way to know, of course, is to read them and then divide them up.
So, that’s what I did. I went through Proverbs and divided them into a list of individual proverbs. By my count, there are 586 proverbs in total. I take one proverb each day and then go to the next one the next day. For each of the longer ones (like the full-chapter proverbs), I read it through a couple times, pray about it, meditate on it, and then write a summary and application points for myself. For each short one, I write it out and mark it up before summarizing it.
If you like this idea and you’re interested in how the book is broken down, you can download a PDF of the breakdown here.
I hope this is helpful to someone. I use this as part of my daily Bible intake. Other parts include one psalm per day and my own reading plan.
By the way... 