ASSEMBLIES OF GOD
Greetings and welcome to the April 2026 video portion of Creating Connections, our monthly digital newsletter from the Assemblies of God Office of Hispanic and Ethnic Relations. I am Dennis Rivera, and it is my pleasure to greet and wish you a blessed Easter.
On Friday, April 3, Christians around the world will celebrate one of our most holy days of the year—the day Jesus Christ of Nazareth was crucified on a Roman cross just outside the city gates of ancient Jerusalem. His death and suffering on that cross were cruel and beyond words. His love for all humankind was the reason for His sacrifice. We do our best to explain it. We sing about it, we write sermons about it, movies have been made about it, but the breadth, the length, the height, and depth of that love, according to the Apostle Paul, is beyond human knowledge. In other words, I believe God wants us to do more than just know it; we have to experience its vastness. When you and I celebrate Holy Week and symbolically stand at the foot of the cross to receive His grace and mercy, at times, there are just no words, and possibly our response is similar to the response of the Centurion and the crowd, as recorded in Luke 23:46-48,
“And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.’ Having said this, He breathed His last. Now, when the centurion saw what had happened, he began praising God, saying, ‘Certainly this man was innocent.’ And all the crowds who came together for this spectacle, when they observed what happened, began to return, beating their breasts.”
The Centurion, who participated in Christ’s crucifixion, was suddenly overtaken by a personal revelation of who Jesus really was, and from the depths of his soul, praise to God flowed from his lips and a declaration like that of a witness called to testify in court, “Certainly this man was innocent.” What a turn of events, from a rejector of Christ to a defender of Christ!
The crowd responded in another way. Luke writes that they began to go home, “beating their breasts”. What does that mean? Maybe Luke’s narrative elsewhere gives us insight into what beating the breast may mean. In Luke 18:10-14, Jesus tells the story of two men who went to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. In the eyes of the people, the Pharisees were considered holy men, and the tax collectors were despised and considered the worst of sinners. The Pharisee stood before God and boasted about his righteous acts, recounting to himself how good he believed he was. But Luke writes in Luke 18:13: “But the tax-collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’” Reading this, it seems like the beating of the breast is a sign of deep remorse, repentance that goes deep into the soul. Possibly a “what have I done” moment. Note that Luke says they went to the spectacle, “public crucifixion” of Jesus of Nazareth. Possibly many of them had hopes that he was the Messiah, the deliverer of Israel from the oppression of Rome, but they went to see and possibly even joined the public mocking, once they realized that he was not going to save himself. But at his death, they are broken, and no word comes out of their mouth, just the beating of their breasts in remorse and repentance. That is a picture for us of what really happened on Good Friday!
We have been talking about the prayers of intercession by godly people for other people, cities, and nations. We cannot talk about the events of Good Friday without including Jesus' prayers. Some of the most telling passages of scripture regarding Christ’s sacrificial death are found in the writings of the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah is often called the Fifth Gospel because he prophesies so much about God’s Servant–Jesus the Messiah. Isaiah 53 is an amazing prophecy about Jesus’ suffering, crucifixion, and ultimate victory over death!
Let’s read Isaiah 53:10-12: “But the LORD was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand. As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge, the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, as He will bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, and He will divide the booty with the strong; Because He poured out Himself to death and was numbered with the transgressors; Yet He Himself bore the sin of many and interceded for the transgressors” (NASB).
Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah, Jesus, would die among transgressors, and be numbered with them, yet his purpose would be to bear their sins in judgment, for the purpose of forgiveness and redemption. Isaiah also prophesied that the Messiah would intercede for the very people who deserved God’s judgment upon themselves. Of the seven sayings that came from Jesus while on the cross, the first one was, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” Jesus was falsely accused and, between Thursday and Friday, went through six trials, three religious and three civil. He was tried before Annas, the former high priest; before Caiaphas, the current high priest; before the Sanhedrin; before Pontius Pilate; before Herod Antipas; and finally, before Pilate a second time. Finally, Pilate tried to release Jesus because he could not find fault, but when they presented Jesus to the crowd, they cried “Crucify him!” Pilate finally appealed to them, saying, “Shall I crucify your King? They cried out, “We have no king but Caesar”, so he handed him over to them to be crucified.
Yet on the cross, Jesus interceded for all of them, asking the Father to offer them forgiveness, for they did not know what they were doing. Jesus was saying, “Sin blinds people, sin keeps people from the truth, sin makes people ignorant of God’s love and mercy.” The prayer of Jesus on the cross addressed humanity's sin through ignorance and darkness. Paul said it this way in Ephesians: “So, this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart” (Ephesians 4:17-18). Paul also said to the Greeks at Athens, “Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring that all people everywhere should repent” (Acts 17:30).
Where would we be if Jesus had not interceded for all of us on that Good Friday, 2000 years ago? He prayed that the Father would forgive our sins because we had been acting in ignorance. But we are not in ignorance any longer, and Jesus’ death and resurrection have destroyed the veil of darkness over the nations, and because of His prayer and vicarious death and resurrection, we all can find forgiveness of sin and the power to live a new life in Christ! Amen and Amen. Happy Resurrection Sunday!
Dennis Rivera
Director, Hispanic & Ethnic Relations
