Why Did Jesus Die So Young?
A man once asked, “Why did Jesus die so young? Why couldn’t He have lived to be an older man before He died? Think of all the good He could have done if He lived as long as Moses!”
The preacher looked at the man and answered:
Think about the kind of death He died compared to the death Moses died. Moses died on a mountain and the angels buried his body. Jesus died publicly and was abandoned by the angels and lastly, by His Heavenly Father. However, before he was hung on the cross, this happened:
Before Jesus was arrested, he had been up since before dawn, probably eighteen to twenty hours. He prayed at Gethsemane and sweat great drops of blood. Then he was arrested by a mob and taken for trial. His disciples abandoned Him.
He was questioned and harassed through the night. He was pushed, mocked, slapped, and stripped naked. The Roman soldiers beat Him with a flagrum, a short-handled whip. The whip was made with strips of leather and pieces of bone and iron balls were woven into the strips. It was intended to rip open the skin and expose the muscle and weaken the victim. It was not intended to kill.
Next, Jesus was paraded through the streets of the town where He received stares, jeers, spit, and perhaps things are thrown at Him. He was required to carry His own cross to the place of crucifixion. When he collapsed from exhaustion, someone else carried the cross as He continued to walk.
They laid Him on the cross at Golgatha hill, stretched his arms, nailed each with an iron spike. Then they nailed the feet. The soldiers picked up the cross and let it jolt into the hole in the ground. They filled the hole and left him to die on the main road, naked, outside the city walls for all to watch.
They crucified two thieves on each side of Jesus. One of them mocked Jesus. The other repented believed in Jesus and was saved from eternal hell and death. Those two thieves were a depiction of the whole human race. Whenever the story of the cross is shared or preached some jeer, yet a few are saved.
When Jesus died the record says that He released His Spirit from His own body. Jesus was always in charge. He deliberately died for you and me to save us from the fate of humanity. Humanity has already been sentenced to eternal death. Humanity gets to stay with the world’s usurper god, Satan. Jesus and His death are our only hope of the Life God always intended for us.
You asked why Jesus did not live as long a life as Moses. I wonder, could a 120-year-old man have endured all the suffering that the mid-thirty-year-old Jesus endured—even before he got to Golgotha Hill?
I think not. Moses might have died after the flogging. I know I would have. ##