10th grade civics, we did the whole thing about the social contract. Do you remember this? I think if you're in the United States, you probably do. Maybe they teach this everywhere else too. I don't know. There's this guy, John Locke, another guy who came a little bit later on, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. But Locke in particular talked about this concept. The later we describe as a social contract, wherein society is held together by this tacit agreement that we make with all of our neighbors to say, I'm going to give up a little bit of my freedom, you give up a little bit of your freedom that we might otherwise have in a completely wild world with no government and it's just us and nature. We're going to lay down a little bit of that freedom. And the result is that effectively we will enjoy more happiness, more prosperity, and more freedom together by forfeiting just this teeny tiny little amount, like the amount where you can kill each other and rob other people. We're going to give that up in favor of having some sort of central mediating power that adjudicates disputes between us. And well, unfortunately, Locke's idea is also going to require that adjudicating force that, you know, solves disputes between people and keeps us safe and does the mail and handles, well, frankly, a bazillion other things. They're going to have to collect a nominal percentage of your income in order to do that. Taxes, right? And there are two things in this life that are certain death and taxes. And so what happens then is you got this concept of a social contract. And I just remember thinking, okay, it's a contract. And the contract says that I signed up to be a part of this society. In this day and age on planet Earth, there's nowhere for me to go to not be a part of a government. So, you know, you get born into it, it's what you're getting. And there's, you know, better government and worse government. You hope you get born into a better one, I guess. But I just remember thinking, but I didn't sign anything. I never really did agree to the social contract. And being born in a place isn't really agreeing to whatever is going on socially or politically there when you got born. I mean, that's totally out of my control. And by the time I'm old enough to think it through, if I have some objections, my only recourses would be like vote or revolt. And I don't think I want to do the revolt thing. I tend to be a pretty peaceful guy. So, ah, bummer. The ground rules are just kind of set in place and you you really don't have any choice but to sign up for the thing. Well, that's kind of strange. And what I've seen unfold as time goes along is that left, right, other, it doesn't matter where people fit politically. At some point, their relationship with the state is going to chafe. There's going to be friction. The government's going to do stuff where you look at that world kingdom and you say, I never really did actually sign up for this or assent to this. I am being forced to pay for it. And I really don't like what's going on. And I voted really hard not to do that thing. And yet we're still doing that thing, and you're making me pay for it. And I don't like that very much. Everybody is going to feel that at some point if they're paying attention. And I think that's just one of the bummers about the nature of a world kingdom. It's one of the incomplete things about the nature of world kingdoms. And it's one of the reasons that, frankly, the kingdom kingdom that Jesus is talking about in Matthew 5, 6, 7, is really appealing. Because this is a kingdom where you kind of do sign up. You have at least what looks to us like a degree of agency in either embracing or rejecting the values of the kingdom, embracing or rejecting the king. It does not, at least at this point, appear to be a kingdom built on coercion, even though it could be, and it would be justified in being so. It looks, at least from the human perspective, acknowledging God is sovereign and all those other things that we could think through some other time, it looks like you have agency not only in signing up, but if we're reading what Jesus is saying right, it looks like you have agency in living out the values of this kingdom and participating in it, which is really different than the social contract that you were born into in whatever country you happen to live in, unless you're like the rare person that immigrated, in which case, well, you had to pick some government. I hope you picked a good one. And so in the social contract, world kingdom, you're going to have friction. That becomes inescapable. And at some point you might feel more patriotic than other times. But generally speaking, the buy-in is nominal at times. And at other times, you outright resent the governing that happens around you, regardless of political affiliation. But in contrast to that, this kingdom of Jesus is way different. You're vested. You have actual ownership. You are a son, a daughter, a child, an heir, an agent, a representative, salt and light, a preservative. You are on mission out into the larger world to take the values grace, love, forgiveness, peace, care for those in need, justice, all of these things that point to the glory of God. You take these values out with you into the broken social contract world. And you're like, hey, look at this thing. This is amazing. It's not even my thing. But there's this truer realer king with this truer realer kingdom. And theoretically, that's what it is for the person who's in the kingdom to point people who aren't in it toward it. And so the vestedness is really something that stands apart. And so we've been talking about like the last 10 chunks of Bible that we've looked at in Matthew 5 and 6, and how all of this seems to be Jesus taking one practical thing, like a thing you're supposed to do or a thing you're not supposed to do, or like a religious discipline and being like, all right, now let's think about what it would look like to get that right if you were vested. And it wasn't just do the thing to make the authority figure happy so that you stay in good stead with the social contract world kingdom. But what if it was like, I want this? I get it, I understand it. This transcends these base world things and extends into something much bigger and larger. And what we do here all of a sudden doesn't just echo in eternity. Like here and eternity are kind of the same thing. And I am living my eternal life right now in this moment. And what I do at work and whether I make the ethical choice or the gross choice in that situation, like these things have eternal implications now. Yeah, and you see how this is such a different thing that he's holding out. And with each detail that Jesus walks through in the Sermon on the Mount as he unpacks that, we get a little better sense that uh, okay, I think I see where this is going. God wants our heart. And maybe we start doing a little thing with our finger where we spin it in a circle, like when we're on the phone with somebody and they're talking too long, and we're like, uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-huh, I get it. Okay, uh-huh-uh-uh, get on to the next thing. Maybe we start to do that with Jesus a little bit as he painstakingly walks us through each of these case studies: murder, adultery, divorce, odes, loving your enemy, giving, prayer, fasting, and now money. But despite that little bit of impatience that you might have felt with this, that maybe I felt with it at moments, I feel like I am much more ready for what he's about to say in Matthew 6.19. This feels like, well, let me put it this way: if Matthew 5.17 is the theological centerpiece of the Gospel of Matthew and the Sermon on the Mount, where he says, Don't think I came to abolish the law and the prophets. I didn't come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. If that's the theological high point, I feel like Matthew 6.19 is the existential behavioral, what do I do with all of this high point of the Sermon on the Mount? I think we knew he was going to say this. I think he's been saying it in so many words already, but now he's just gonna spell the thing out. Ready? Here we go. Matthew 6.19 and forward. Don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust don't destroy and where thieves don't break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. God wants your heart. God wants your heart. God wants your heart. God wants your heart. How many times have we said that? How many times have we reviewed that point? It's like the take-home point of every one of these ten anecdotes I keep referencing back to, where Jesus puts a practical thing under the microscope of the kingdom values. Well, of course that's the take-home. Of course, this has all been about God saying, I don't want your cold external stuff. I want your real authentic vestedness and buy-in. I don't want you to just be my subject. I want you to love me. I don't want you to just kind of play your cards to see if my team and my kingdom works out so that you will have been aligned and have curried favor with the king who came out on top. I want you to love me. I want you to want this to win. I want hallowed be my name. I want my kingdom come. I want my will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And I just realized how weird that sounded. And of course, in all of that language, is from the perspective of God, right? Like that seems to be what God wants from people. So where does your treasure go? Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. And it's really interesting that where Jesus goes here would just seem to be stuff. Don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy. Well, obviously that applies to money in part, but also investment, stuff, property, tangible things. But heck, let's go beyond that. What else does moth and rust destroy, or what those are a metaphor for? Um, people? Anything upon which entropy can act? And not just people, situations, circumstances, contexts where we've figured out how to make a little bit of lemonade out of some lemons, and we're sort of king of this little cell block, this little neighborhood that we've got under the heel of our boot and we're making the best of it and making it work for us. All of those circumstances are gonna go away. All the mechanisms that we're using right now to get ahead and make things work, they're gonna break. They're gonna fall apart. They're gonna be sea changes, seismic shifts in how people think and how things work and technology and politics and war, all of it's gonna break at one point or another. And so to just treat this passage as you know, don't store for yourselves treasures on earth as, well, don't worry about money. Uh we'll get to the worry thing in the next passage. But here, I think he's talking about the entire context of your empire of dirt, of your world kingdom investments. I think what he's saying is investing in that stuff is like investing in some rogue-failed nation in a weird corner of the world where the government's unstable and they have coups every couple of weeks, and it's just clear that nothing there can possibly last. Don't throw your money at that thing. You buy a house in that country, the next dictator is just going to claim ownership of everything, and you're out all of it you've invested there. It's too unstable. But the kingdom, the real kingdom, it's stable. It's the real deal. So the encouragement is not just him saying, like, I want you to love me and be vested in all of this. There's also an appeal to reason. If there is such a kingdom with such a God who's in charge of everything and made everything, is all powerful, will never be out of power, and is in control of all things for all time, like wouldn't that be the most stable environment in which to invest ever? Wouldn't that be an investor's dream? Throw your resources there, not on the war-torn coup factory. That place is a disaster. And in the grand scheme of time, the most stable country in the world is a war-torn coup factory compared to the kingdom that Jesus is describing. So again, the appeal is at the level of the heart, and the appeal is also at the level of reason. In both situations, Jesus says or indicates that he believes the conclusion is obvious. Investment in the kingdom is the far wiser investment. He goes on to say some other stuff that is going to raise some questions, and we will just have to break that down when we've got more time next time around. It's probably been like a week here since I've said thank you to everybody who's supporting this thing, but that needs to happen a lot. It's very difficult for me to articulate how grateful I am. Not only that you guys hang out with me and that we get to do this, but that some of you make it possible for this to be like a thing that I throw serious time and energy at. So yeah, thanks to everybody who's supporting the program at patreon.com slash uh the TMBH podcast. And also thank you to everybody who doesn't. I like all of you and I love that we get to do this. Okay, that's where we're hitting pause. I'm Matt. This is a 10-minute Bible hour podcast, and we will do it again soon.