II Chronicles 29:3 He in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of the LORD, and repaired them
All of us have probably seen some sort of production, maybe a play, where actors depict some kind of drama. So, you know what an actor is. He is someone who has a script, something that is written down, and he follows that script. He knows what to say and how to act because he is following a premade plan. All of us in life, whether we are actors or not, are acting. I don’t mean we are pretending. I mean we are actually doing things. We are living. We have different scripts.
I am a husband, a son, a father, a grandfather, a preacher, president of Bill Rice Ranch. I have a number of different scripts. You probably have a number of different scripts as well. If I were to say, “Who are you and what do you do?” that is more complicated than just one thing. So, how well are you living? Are you doing well and acting well?
Second Chronicles 29 is the story of King Hezekiah. He had a choice to make as a young king, and that was what script he would choose or accept. In the previous chapter we read of his father, wicked King Ahaz, who shut up the doors of the house of the LORD. He just shut it up and there was nothing going on there. Verse 2 says of Hezekiah that “he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD.” Verses 3-4 say, “He in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of the LORD, and repaired them. And he brought in the priests and the Levites.” He chose a different script than his father had.
To live well, you must choose the right script. That means you have to decide the value of the scripts you are given. Maybe you only think you have been given one script. You think, “This is what my family has always done, what my business has always done, what my church has always done.” You have to decide if you are going to blindly accept the script you have been given or choose a script that pleases God.
Verse 25 tells us the kind of script this king chose. The Bible says he did “according to the commandment of David…for so was the commandment of the LORD by his prophets.” Verse 26 speaks of the instruments of David. Verse 27 speaks of that which was ordained by King David of Israel. Verse 30 speaks of praise unto the LORD with the words of David, the script of David. So, to live well you have to choose the right script.
Choose people well. One young preacher told his professor, “I am going to be original or nothing.” His professor said later he was both; he was original and nothing. Originality is simply the gift of hiding your sources. All of us have sources, most of which we are not even aware, whether it is what we watch, what we read, who we listen to, or the music we take in. Choose your people well. To live well, you have to choose the right script.
Also, choose the traits well that you take from the people you have chosen. You do have a choice. You may say, “This is what my dad or mom always did.” I hope there was good there. Most people are not a flawless example of anything. Take David. David was a man after God’s own heart through whom God spoke, but that doesn’t mean David was perfect. Indeed, there were things David did that were shameful and horrible. So, King Hezekiah was far better for copying David than copying his own father Ahaz, but he didn’t just copy everything from David. He copied those things that made David a noble man.
The other day I had some blood work done and the lady who did the blood work was very professional and did a good job. I appreciated that. It is a skill I could never do. I thanked her and gave her a tract with the gospel. She had a ring in her nose and on the ring were several beads. Now, I don’t know why she did that, whether it was because of some kind of aesthetic she thought was attractive or something else. What I do know is that she is made in the image of God. God loves her. Christ died for her as He has for me. But you don’t just wake up one morning and think, “I’m going to get my nose pierced,” and put a ring in your nose with beads.
She is a professional. She is good at what she does. Had it been ten years ago that I said someone took my blood who had a ring in her nose, it would have been the fodder for jokes, but it is not funny to anyone now is because it has been normalized. My point is not about nose rings or any other fashion, but that none of us live or die to ourselves. All of us are following the scripts we have been handed. I don’t know what script this lady followed exactly, but I do know that it not something that is innate and natural. It is something learned and taken on just as the way I behave myself is built on a number of choices, like who I decide to copy.
Choices are complicated. So, I am not just to choose the right people, but the right traits from the right people. You think about King David, a good man but complicated. So, absorb what is good and spit out what is not. Verse 5 says that the king told the Levites, “Sanctify now yourselves, and sanctify the house of the LORD God of your fathers, and carry forth the filthiness out of the holy place. For our fathers have trespassed.” They were not following their fathers in that and were going to get rid of the evil and purify the good in the temple.
The same is true in my own life. God loves you; Christ died for you; and the decisions you make do matter. How do you make good decisions and live well? To live well, you need to choose the right script. If you do that, God will help you to do the right thing.