The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again <they> started wailing and said, “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate <before this> at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this <same food every day>!”
“At no cost”!
Really?
These people were slaves!
And they say they had food “at no cost”?
As the caption at the left says – Question Everything!
If you are a slave, is anything really at no cost?
Is anything really “free”?
OK – you didn’t pay money.
Because you don’t have any money.
But then – you don’t have anything!!
So- the back story here – who these people are and how they came to be grumbling about the food they had.
If you haven’t realized it yet, this is from when the Israelites were led from slavery under the Pharaoh in Egypt – led by God, through Moses. The full quote from the top is –
Nu 11:4 The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, “If only we had meat to eat! 5 We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. 6 But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!”
Reality check time –
- The previous food wasn’t at no cost – wasn’t free. They were slaves after all. Pharaoh “owned” them. Their own lives were not theirs. Hardly what I’d call free.
- The manna they were getting was from God. Six mornings a week. All they had to do was go out and pick it up off the ground. They didn’t pay anything for it either. And – their lives were no longer controlled 24×7 by Pharaoh.
- But it was “boring”. The food was the same – as opposed to the previous variety they had in their diets.
- They weren’t totally “free” yet – they were after all wandering around in the desert. But that was because of their own previous actions against God! So it’s not like the wandering was without reason. But look what they were promised –
Ex 3:7 The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
So the people were freed from hundreds of years of slavery – which came to pass because they turned away from God – to be able to have what God promised them above. But did they learn anything? Apparently not much – and not for very long. They grumbled so many times!
The real cost
When I was a graduate student, taking economics classes, something called “opportunity cost” was a popular topic. From Wikipedia – we see opportunity cost defined as below –
In microeconomic theory, the opportunity cost of a choice is the value of the best alternative forgone where, given limited resources, a choice needs to be made between several mutually exclusive alternatives. Assuming the best choice is made, it is the “cost” incurred by not enjoying the benefit that would have been had by taking the second best available choice. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines it as “the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen.” Opportunity cost is a key concept in economics, and has been described as expressing “the basic relationship between scarcity and choice.” The notion of opportunity cost plays a crucial part in attempts to ensure that scarce resources are used efficiently. Thus, opportunity costs are not restricted to monetary or financial costs: the real cost of output forgone, lost time, pleasure or any other benefit that provides utility should also be considered opportunity costs.
What we see here is that while the people at the time claimed the good food from Pharaoh – who had enslaved them – wasn’t “at no cost”.
In fact – the cost was very high.
Maybe you don’t know / remember what happened. Maybe you think that life under Pharaoh wasn’t really that bad.
Here’s a sample –
Ex 1:8 Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt. 9 “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become much too numerous for us. 10 Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.”
Ex 1:11 So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites 13 and worked them ruthlessly. 14 They made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their hard labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly.
Ex 1:15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, 16 “When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” 17 The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. 18 Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?”
Ex 1:19 The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.”
Ex 1:20 So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.
Ex 1:22 Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”
At the top, I pointed out that the cost of the food they thought was so great while they were slaves was in fact “bought” at a high cost. It was paid for by their very lives. Every single minute of every day of their lives belonged to Pharaoh. Every single one of the people had been born into slavery. They knew nothing but slavery. One could think – maybe it wasn’t that bad. Maybe the people didn’t really know that anything was wrong. You know – the Stockholm Syndrome kind of thing – was in effect and the people somehow managed to convince themselves it was “normal” or that they even “liked” it.
Wrong!
Ex 3:7 The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians
Not only did God see the misery of His people and become concerned about them – and decide to do something about it – but he heard them crying out because of their slave drivers!
The people knew things were not right. They knew things were very wrong. And they cried out to God for relief.
Every moment of each of their lives was payment for that “no cost” food they had been eating.
But it gets worse!
That kind of payment for food is bad enough.
And it’s one that’s not too hard to see. At least it’s not too hard sitting & reading it now.
But – as we saw with Opportunity Cost – it’s even worse. The price they paid was exponentially higher than even being slaves to Pharaoh!
Look at what God promised them –
So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey…
Yes – The Promised Land. The original promised land. The one that is the reason those two words are a popular saying even today.
In fact – it goes all the way back to Genesis – when God made a promise to Abram (later to be called Abraham) –
Ge 12:1 The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.
Ge 12:2 “I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
Ge 12:3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
Yes – that Promised Land.
To return to Opportunity Cost – what we see from Opportunity Cost is that the price for the “no cost” food was actually this –
- The people were slaves to Pharaoh. And they had been all their lives.
- The people were not able to live “normal” lives – like what they had before their ancestors had turned away from God.
- And worse yet – even after God promised to free them from slavery – they still didn’t listen to Him – they still didn’t follow Him – they still grumbled against Him – they still said they were better off as slaves. Ultimately – they told the God that rescued them that they wished He had left them alone and they He let them stay as slaves! As a result of that – they spent all those extra years wandering around the desert. As a result of that – not one person who had been rescued from slavery in the land of Pharaoh actually made it into the Promised Land!
That’s the true cost of that “no cost” food.
That “no cost” food was expensive.
Incredibly expensive!
Would we be any different?
OK. Back to the “question everything” theme.
After reading that – do you think maybe some boring food would have been worth being freed?
After reading that – do you think that maybe you would have been different –
that you would have in fact not been wandering around the desert in the first place –
because you would have been following God right from the start?
Don’t count on it.
But that’s not even the real question!
The real question
The real question – the one in front of us today – is how we respond to this –
Jn 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”
Do you know that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son?
Do you know that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life?
If you don’t – you have to look at the opportunity cost of what you’re giving up.
You are a slave to something today. No – it’s not Pharaoh. But it is something. Maybe it’s money. Maybe it’s your job. Maybe it’s drugs. Maybe it’s alcohol.
It is something. We all just need to figure out what we are slaves to.
And then we have to decide – is what we are giving up – eternal life with God – is giving that up worth whatever “pleasure” we think we’re getting from our slave masters?
All that’s necessary to get started on the path to eternal life with God is to realize this – Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. It’s not hard to get started. Just like it wasn’t hard for the Israelites who were slaves to Pharaoh to get started on the path to freedom that God provided for them. All they had to do was believe that God was going to rescue them – that God was working through Moses – and trust Him. Then they could have the Promised Land. And yet – not one of them made it to the Promised Land. Their children did – but not them.
Why did this happen? Because of the very next verses. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.” We would rather stay with our current “pleasures” than take the risk of doing the right thing for promised future pleasures. We live increasingly in a society of “I want it all and I want it right now!”
There’s no looking at the opportunity cost anymore. There’s an implicit statement in what we say today – “I want it all and I want it right now!”.
What we mean – but don’t say – is that “I want it all and I want it right now!” — no matter what the cost!
We don’t care about the future. Not the short term future – not the longer term future – and certainly not the eternal future.
We are taught to care about NOW and that’s a lesson that too many of us have learned really well.
Like the Israelites enslaved under Pharaoh – we are also enslaved today. Enslaved to something different from them. But enslaved none-the-less.
To those who take that first step toward freedom from modern slavery today – Jesus is praying for us –
Jn 17:13 “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. 14 I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. 15 My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. 17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. 19 For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.
If you’d like to have Him say that prayer for you as well – It’s not hard.
The paragraphs above on John 3:16-21 are a good start.
If you don’t want the modern equivalent of wandering around in the desert – and ultimately dying in that desert – the choice is yours. You can stay with the life / the “pleasures” / the slave-master you have today. Or – you can start to do what is said above.
Jesus is praying for you
Interestingly enough – Jesus didn’t just pray for those who believe in Him right now.
If you don’t believe in Him yet – in the next verses after the ones above – He prayed for you too –
Jn 17:20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: 23 I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
Jn 17:24 “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.
Jn 17:25 “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. 26 I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
If you don’t believe in Him yet –
and especially if you don’t believe in Him AND you’re still reading – then my message is maybe the one that Jesus is praying about for you when He says –
I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,
And Jesus also prays this for you –
May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: 23 I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
Jn 17:24 “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.
That’s part of the opportunity cost that one pays for not believing in and following Jesus.
Not only do we stay with our current wanderings in the desert – but we give up the things that Jesus prayed for – the things He wanted us to have,
Ask yourself – what’s the cost for the life you’re living now?
The true cost?