Character Matters | Repay Harm With Good | 1 Samuel 24 - Clint Leavitt

We live in a world full of vengeance. Social media. Liam Neeson movies. Batman. For as long as we've been around, we've built our societies upon the notion that retribution and vengeance can really bring the peace and restoration we're hoping for. Yet over and over again it has failed. So what can we do to bring the peace and restoration we're hoping for. Watch as Pastor Clint unpacks the story of David's encounter with Saul in 1 Samuel 24, learning how David's example points us to the life-giving practice of repaying harm with good. Sermon Resources: 1. “To take vengeance on one’s enemies is nobler than to come to terms with them; for to retaliate is just, and that which is just is noble; and further, a courageous man ought not to allow himself to be beaten.” -Aristotle, Rhetoric 2. Execration texts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execrat.... 3. Before He Cheats, by Carrie Underwood 4. Gives You Hell, by The All-American Rejects 5. "Forgiveness, Health, and Well-Being: A Review of Evidence for Emotional Versus Decisional Forgiveness, Dispositional Forgiveness, and Reduced Unforgiveness," by Everett L. Worthington, Charlotte Van Oyen Witvliet, Pietro Pietrini, and Andrea J. Miller - published in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine, August 2007 6. “A person that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds fresh which otherwise would heal.” -Francis Bacon, Of Revenge 7. “To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back–in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.” -Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking 8. “It is a serious thing to live in a society of image of God bearers, to remember that the dullest, most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, to some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal…The weight of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it.” -C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory 9. “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 10. "The Book of Forgiving," by Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu 11. “Pain that is not transformed is transferred.” -Ronald Rolheiser