A Bible Reading Plan

Updated: Monday, November 9, 2020

Download The 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?

The Bible reveals God’s Master Plan of Redemption. It’s the most extensive and involved project plan ever devised and it is being perfectly executed. It is simple in its goals, but it is complex beyond belief in its details. While all the project’s details are not revealed in the Bible, its goals are, as are its major phases. Even the revealing of this plan by God is part of the plan itself. We must understand that we, as God’s creatures, have rebelled against God and we owe him an eternal debt. But God loved us so much that he paid that debt for us so that we could be reconciled to him again. God’s project plan has been given to us by our great God for our understanding.

A new Bible reading plan, not-so-creatively called The Plan, is ready for your use if you’d like it. The Plan was designed to keep God’s overall project plan in view while maintaining the flow of thought of each human author of the books of the Bible. I hope you’ll find it useful in your daily Bible reading.

If you want to get right to The Plan, you can download it using the link at the top of this page. If you’re interested in the how and why of it, including notes on each phase, keep reading.

The Title: The Plan
I originally wanted to call this reading plan The Story as the Bible is the story of God’s redemptive plan for mankind, but I quickly found out that The Story was already in use by a very famous author, so I thought it best to change it. My wife, Debi, came up with The Plan and I think it fits well. It’s a reading plan, of course, so there’s that, but it also describes the Bible as God’s project plan to redeem mankind; it’s God’s Master Plan of Redemption, brilliantly planned and brilliantly executed to perfection. And as with all major project plans, it’s divided into different phases or steps.

How it started
There are a TON of plans available to read the Bible and I think that is a really good thing. Different people’s minds work in different ways and where one reading plan is just right for one person, another person may be better helped by a different reading plan. Or perhaps someone likes to use a different plan every time they read the Bible through. For me, I like keeping the big picture in view while I’m absorbing the details. I also feel that each author (human author) wrote his book with a specific purpose in mind. As with all writings, if we’re to understand it we must seek to understand what the original author meant by what he wrote. I created this plan to satisfy my need to keep the big picture in front of me and to not lose each author’s intent.

The Plan started with The Bible Project reading plan. One of the things I like about the Bible Project’s reading plan is that it’s ordered logically based on a semi-chronological order, but there were a few changes I wanted to make. So, this plan starts with their plan and includes my own edits and rearrangements that I’ll explain below.

General Notes

The Bible is such an incredible collection of documents. It’s an amazing book, primarily, because it’s God’s communication with humanity. I believe everyone should be reading it, studying it, meditating on it, and learning it. In its pages is everything that God wants us to know about him, about his plan to redeem mankind, and what our part is in it.

The story of the Bible is God’s Master Plan of Redemption. It starts with God creating a perfect environment and placing mankind in it. It then reveals the rebellion of mankind against God and God’s plan and actions to restore mankind to his former position. Some have outlined it this way:

Paradise            Genesis 1-2
Paradise Lost       Genesis 3 - Revelation 20
Paradise Regained   Revelation 21-22

God created the universe and everything in it. This includes Earth which he created specifically to be a suitable home for his special creation: humanity. He placed his human creatures in a perfect environment and gave them commands to follow and joyful work to do. But Adam and Eve rebelled against God and brought a curse upon the creation. God was perfectly within his rights as Creator and Owner to leave mankind in that state of curse, but he loved his creation and made a way for them to be redeemed. That is what the Bible is all about. It’s the grand plan of God to redeem those he’s chosen for himself in a way that brings him glory.

One Primary Objective: Read to Understand
I have one primary objective when I’m reading the Bible: I want to understand what I’m reading. Oftentimes when I read a book or chapter of the Bible (or any other writing, for that matter), I finish what I’m reading and really can’t state clearly what I’ve read. This seems to be especially true if I feel I’ve read it before and then my mind starts wandering as I read. So, I want to read each book of the Bible with the goal of understanding it, or understand it afresh. This objective governs the speed at which I read as well as how much I read at a time. Reading too fast, for me, causes me to lose track of what I’m reading. Also, reading too little at a time causes me to lose track of the big picture of the book as I keep having to remember where I left off; it seems too fragmented when I read too little at a time.

Two Major Goals
There are a two major goals I want to accomplish with this reading plan.

1. I want to read the story of the Bible in setting chronological order. When dating a book you can date the time of writing or the time of the events that take place in the book. These are almost always different as most writers are writing about events that took place prior to the writing (prophesy excepted, of course). My desire is to read the Bible in setting chronological order.
2. I want to take each book as a unit, reading through one entire book before starting the next one. As I’m reading through a book of the Bible, I want to get the point that the original author intended more than I want to be strictly chronological. I mentioned above that each book’s author had a goal in mind when writing the book. While there are many chronological plans that combine the books to keep the events in order, this interrupts the flow of thought of each particular author. For example, Matthew, when he wrote his Gospel, had a particular purpose in writing that was different from Luke and his Gospel. By combining those books for the sake of chronology, each author’s purpose is easily lost. There are, of course, benefits to using a chronological plan to read through the Bible, but for the sake of this second major goal, I want to read each book independently of the other books.

Other Decisions
There are some other decisions I needed to make with this plan in order to maintain the two major goals just mentioned.

1. For books that have overlapping settings (and there are a lot of them), I decided to place the book with the earliest major setting before the others and keep them in that order. A good example is that of Daniel compared to Ezekiel. See below for more on that.
2. I needed to place the wisdom books somewhere. These books (Job, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes) don’t have time settings per se, so I placed them where I did for the reasons described in the Wisdom of Israel phase (see below).
3. You may notice that Psalms and Proverbs are not in any of the phases. This is because of the nature of these books. It is in no way my intention that anyone should exclude these books from their regular reading of Scripture, but they fit less neatly into the Phases framework. The Psalms cover a wide range of time and the proverbs are not based on a chronological setting at all. Here’s where they fit in The Plan.
   1. Read one psalm per day. If you miss a day, simply pick up where you left off. When you finish Psalm 150, start again at Psalm 1 the next day. This should easily become a perpetual habit. See this post for more about how Psalms fits into The Plan.
   2. Read one proverb per day. The Proverbs is an animal that I’ve wrestled with for many years. How should I read this book and really take it in? For a majority of the book of Proverbs, each verse is a single proverb with a message that’s separate from the verses around it. So, if I read a chapter at a time, I’m reading through, for example, 32 different proverbs. That’s way too many for me to keep in my head and maintain my goal of reading to understand. Here’s more on Proverbs, how it fits into The Plan, and a printout of how I break out the individual proverbs.

Notes about the Phases within The Plan framework

There are 17 phases to The Plan altogether; here are some brief notes on each one.

Phase: Creation and Fall
This phase starts the Scripture with the creation of the world—especially mankind—then the fall of man and the results of that fall. The rest of Scripture flows from this phase.

Phase: Abrahamic Covenant
The Abrahamic Covenant is a vital element in God’s Master Plan of Redemption. Through Abraham, all the nations—the Jews and the Gentiles—would be blessed by Abraham’s descendant: Jesus.

Phase: The Exodus from Egypt
As God promised Abraham, his descendants would be numerous! We also see from the Exodus that God is a God of rescue; he rescues his people from slavery. This is a theme that will continue to play out through the rest of Scripture and is vital for us as followers of Christ!

Phase: Mosaic Covenant
This is the covenant that God made with the newly-formed nation of Israel. God gave the Law and the people agreed to be obedient. This was designed to set the people of God apart from the other nations of the world. The Israelites were supposed to be a light of testimony to the other nations, inviting the nations into the covenant. As we’ll see going forward, the people were unable to keep the covenant.

Phase: The Wilderness
After receiving the Law, the people of Israel were led by God to the Promised Land, the land promised to them in the Abrahamic Covenant. The people, however, refused to believe that God would give them the land, so they were forced to wander in the wilderness until an entire generation died.

Phase: The Promised Land
This phase is the section of Scripture that tells us about the conquest of the Land and life in the Land after the conquest but before the first king.

Phase: Rise & Fall of the Kingdom
This phase is the story of the Kingdom under human kings from Saul to the divided kingdom to the Babylonian Exile.
I have seen it argued that what we now have as four books (1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings) were once two books (Samuel and Kings) instead of four, but they certainly read like one single story. So, I’ve listed it as one book: Samuel-Kings.

Phase: Pre-Exilic Prophets
My objective here was to place these prophets in setting chronological order as best I understand them. These prophets worked and wrote during the time of the Kingdom.

Phase: Wisdom of Israel
The wisdom books are less about chronology and more about… well, wisdom.
I placed Job, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs here as a break, of sorts, from the story line. We’ve seen the creation of the universe, the fall of man, and how God formed the nation of Israel with its kings and prophets. We stop now to take a look at the wisdom literature of the people of Israel. While we’re taking a break from the timeline, we’re still looking at God’s Master Plan of Redemption; the wisdom books are still dealing with God’s Plan. We’ll pick up the timeline again with a recap in The Plan So Far next.

Phase: The Plan So Far
I got this idea for Chronicles from The Bible Project. I believe this book was written post-Exile as an encouragement to the returning exiles, but the setting is the same as Kings and leads up to the Babylonian Exile without dealing much with the Exile. So, Chronicles is placed here as a recap before we get deep into the events leading up to the Exile and then the Exile itself. I realize, of course, that there is that last paragraph in 2 Chronicles which deals with the end of the Exile which we’ll treat as a glimmer of hope for the future.

Phase: Leading up to the Exile
Jeremiah served and wrote as one of the last pre-exilic prophets, but also into the Exile itself. He also wrote Lamentations. We learn again and again that the people of God are hard-hearted and continue to refuse to be obedient to the Law of the Mosaic Covenant. So, according to the stipulations in that Covenant, God sends them into Exile, but not without plenty of warning.

This is a painful time in God’s Plan, but even here God continues to unfold his Plan as Jeremiah reveals a New Covenant that is coming that will remove the hard hearts of the people and replace them with hearts that are able to be obedient to God. He also reveals, as have other prophets before him, that a perfect, final sacrifice for sin will be made, one that will completely satisfy the justice of God.

Phase: During the Exile
It’s here that we learn a lot about what life was like during the Exile. We also see how God continues to work his Redemptive Plan even in this very difficult situation.

Obadiah is not easy to date; it depends on what actions of Edom Obadiah is talking about in v10-14. I have decided that it makes the most sense to me that the actions of Edom are those that take place during the destruction of Jerusalem and the 3rd wave of the Babylonian Exile, so I’ve placed it at the beginning of the Exile. But does it go in Leading up to the Exile or in During the Exile? While the events described are at the Exile, the accusation obviously came afterward, so I placed it between Daniel and Ezekiel.

I placed Daniel before Ezekiel because Daniel starts prior to Ezekiel and finishes after Ezekiel finishes, though there’s a large time gap between Daniel 4 and Daniel 5.

Phase: After the Exile
According to the promise of God to the people in Exile, God graciously brings the people back into the land. But what looks to be a wonderful, glorious return to true worship of God is once again halted by the hard hearts of the people.

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah were originally one book, so I’m treating them that way in The Plan. Haggai, Zechariah, and Esther all take place during the time of Ezra-Nehemiah, so Ezra-Nehemiah is first. Haggai & Zechariah cover roughly the same time period as each other, but before Esther.

The order of events is this:

• Ezra 1-5
• Haggai
• Zechariah
• Ezra 6
• Esther
• Ezra 7-10
• Nehemiah

So the order of reading in The Plan is: Ezra-Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah, Esther

Phase: OT Conclusion
Malachi concludes the Old Testament. After everything the Israelites have gone through, Malachi comes to the same conclusion as Ezra-Nehemiah (and all of Scripture to this point): the people of God are still rebellious and a complete heart change is necessary.

The New Testament
The order of the New Testament books follows the desired setting chronological order as much as possible, mainly applying only to the four Gospels and Acts, while most of the rest of the books are timeless teachings. See below for more on each phase.

Phase: Jesus & the New Covenant
This is the central phase in the entire Plan of God. It is the capstone of the whole project, if you will. It is here that the many promises so far will come to fruition as Jesus comes on the scene as the Son of God who lives a life of perfect obedience and who pays the penalty for the sins of the world, taking God’s full wrath upon himself. All of God’s true children place their trust in Jesus and dedicate their lives to him. Jesus removes the hearts of stone and gives them hearts of flesh.

It can be argued for a different setting order for the four Gospels, but they mainly cover the same time period, so I kept them in biblical order with one exception: Luke and Acts are grouped together. Luke-Acts is clearly Luke’s two-part telling of the founding of the Kingdom. So, the order of reading is Matthew, Mark, John, Luke-Acts.

Phase: New Covenant People
This phase contains writings from several of Jesus’ disciples explaining what life should look like for God’s chosen people who have been transformed into true Jesus followers.

Paul’s Writings
Before leaving Michigan, I was studying Paul’s letters with a friend of mine. We’d meet each week for breakfast and discuss the passage for that week. How we ended up in Paul’s letters is an interesting story, which you can read here. It was during this time that we dated the writing of Paul’s letters.
These letters have been arranged into the order of writing.

Other Writers
The remaining letters in this phase are from writers other than Paul. They have been kept in Biblical order as they don’t really cover any setting chronology.

Phase: Final Culmination
This phase, containing the book of Revelation, reveals the final step in God’s Master Plan of Redemption. We’ve seen the creation, the fall, and the building of the Kingdom of God, we’ve seen the capstone of the Project: Jesus Christ, and we’ve seen how the followers of Jesus are to take the Good News of Jesus to the world. Now we’ll see how the entire plan will end, culminating in a new Heaven and a new Earth and an eternity of joy with God!

While the dating of the book of Revelation (writing and setting) is debated, I do think it was the last book written. It obviously includes topics that have happened and ones that have yet to happen, for the author and for us. It concludes with the New Jerusalem and the New Earth. For those reasons, this is the last book in The Plan.

Download The Plan using the link at the top of this page.