What is Ash Wednesday?

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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Hey girl, wash your face.

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Oh wait, it's Ash Wednesday.

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And that's what we're going to talk about today on Conversations with a Calvinist.

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Stay tuned.

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Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.

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My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.

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Today is Wednesday and it just so happens that today is Ash Wednesday.

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And so on today's episode, which we are dubbing a theology short, we're going to be talking about the subject of Ash Wednesday.

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We're going to be talking a little bit about the history of it.

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What does it mean? Why do people do it? And is it something that a Calvinist can do? Because of course I am a Calvinist.

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So let's begin by talking about what Ash Wednesday is.

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First of all, to understand Ash Wednesday, we have to understand Lent.

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And this is part of what we call the liturgical calendar.

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This is a calendar that goes way back into church history.

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It's a calendar that sets certain dates throughout the year, such as things like Easter and Christmas and other specific liturgical holidays that are celebrated in churches that observe the liturgical calendar.

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And usually it's observed not only with certain days, but certain colors for the seasons and all those things have meanings and they all go back to specific traditions.

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A lot of people associate them primarily with the Catholic church, but not everything that is done on the liturgical calendar is necessarily Catholic.

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Some of it really goes back, even though the Catholics would say they go back to the original church, the Roman Catholic church, as it is today, certainly does not.

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Their traditions do not go back to the early church.

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And many of the traditions have been picked up along the way.

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So as we're talking about Lent, I have some notes here that I want to bring out and share with you.

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The season of Lent, this is from modernreformation.org.

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It says, the season of Lent traces its roots back to the fourth century.

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The Council of Nicaea in 325, which famously produced the creed by the same name, also produced a number of canons of a more practical nature.

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The fifth canon makes a passing reference to Lent, which would suggest the practice was in some sense established at that point.

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So Lent is an old tradition.

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It goes back to the fourth century, at least among Christians who are practicing it, and it's intended to be basically a time of preparation for the Easter holiday.

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It's the 40 days leading up to the time of the celebration of Easter, which is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, and it's a time of forsaking self.

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It's a time of fasting.

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It's a time of self-denial.

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It's a time of putting away bad habits.

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And really, in many ways, it would be considered like a time of preparation, preparing to celebrate Easter.

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And the act of putting ashes on the head on Ash Wednesday is the commemoration of kicking off this holiday.

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You're getting ready to celebrate it, and you have ashes put on your forehead.

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Now, putting ashes on the forehead is something that is biblical, particularly Old Testament biblical, and we see many times in the Old Testament where there was a time of brokenness or a time of mourning where the people would put ashes on their head.

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And so this day, Ash Wednesday, putting ashes on the head is symbolic of beginning a time of fasting.

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And this is really as far as – that's as close to the Bible as it gets.

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I mean, obviously, the Bible does call us to fasting.

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The Bible does call us to self-denial and those things.

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But as far as how it's practiced, at least putting ashes on the head does have biblical foundation, at least a little bit of biblical foundation.

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But again, Lent itself, the season of Lent, is not mentioned in the Bible, and it's certainly not commanded for believers to practice.

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Romans 14 gives us liberty in the practicing of holy days.

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It talks about one celebrating one day over another, another day esteeming – another person esteeming every day the same.

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And so as far as Christians are concerned in their ability to observe Lent, it certainly is in accordance with Romans 14 and the liberty of conscience.

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So I wouldn't say there's sin involved in being involved in Lent necessarily or sin in avoiding Lent and not practicing Lent and abstaining from Lent.

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So as long as the practices that a person is doing does not violate Scripture, then in that sense there wouldn't be anything necessarily wrong with practicing Lent.

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But I do want to talk about maybe the good and the bad, because I do think that we need to consider both when we're trying to decide whether or not it's something that we should do.

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We could say we could do it, but don't know whether or not we should do it.

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We're so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.

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So let's talk about the good.

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We talk about Lent, is there anything good about it? Well, practicing discipline is always good.

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It's always good for us to have times where we focus on the Lord, and the Bible does call us to seasons of fasting.

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Obviously we can't fast all the time or else we would die.

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So having times of fasting is appropriate.

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And when Jesus talked about fasting, he actually said, when you fast, not if you fast.

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And that's been pointed out many times that Jesus actually does assume that we will fast.

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And when he says, when you fast, do it this way.

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So there is an assumption in Scripture that believers will fast.

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And so is Lent a good time to fast? Well, it's a season that's marked by fasting, so there is that.

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But at the same time, you can fast any time.

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I'll give you an example.

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When I'm baptizing a new believer at Sovereign Grace Family Church, I encourage that new believer to fast with me, because I believe that fasting is a good way to prepare oneself for receiving the sign of baptism.

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And so we go through a time of fasting, me as the one doing the baptism and them as the one receiving the sign of baptism, we fast together, usually at least one day of the week prior to their baptism.

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So fasting is good.

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Having a time of fasting is good.

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Fasting with other people can be a good thing.

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And so all of those things are the good.

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But now let's talk about the bad.

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Ash Wednesday is a time where people literally receive an outward mark on their body to show that they're fasting.

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They receive ashes on their head, usually in the shape of a cross, and it's showing the world that they're participating in Lent, which seems to contradict the language of Christ.

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I'm going to read a passage to you.

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This is Matthew 6, 16 through 18.

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Jesus is speaking.

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This is in the Sermon on the Mount.

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He says, When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting.

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I tell you the truth.

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They have received their reward.

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But when you fast, put oil on your head, wash your face so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father who is unseen.

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So right there again, that's Matthew 6, 16 through 18.

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And again, it seems to go against the tradition of Ash Wednesday, because Ash Wednesday says, Put these ashes on your head to show the world that you're fasting.

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But Jesus says, Don't do that.

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He says, Wash your face, put oil on your head.

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And ultimately what he's saying is, Don't have any outward markings of your fasting, but rather let it be something that is internal.

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Let it be something that's between you and God.

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And so that's one area that I would say Ash Wednesday sort of seems to go against the spirit of fasting and what Jesus commanded us when he commanded us or when he told us about the subject of fasting.

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There's also something else about Ash Wednesday that's bothersome to me.

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Maybe you'll see it a little bit differently, but that's what is typically referred to as Fat Tuesday.

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Fat Tuesday was yesterday, because today is Ash Wednesday.

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It's March 2, 2022.

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Yesterday, of course, was March 1, and yesterday was Fat Tuesday.

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French, that phrase is Mardi Gras.

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Of course, we are familiar with the indulgences which happen at Mardi Gras.

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It's a celebration of indulgence.

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And what it is, it's like a last hurrah before I fast.

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I'm going to have this time of celebration and indulgence before I go and have to go through the tedium or the tedious activity of fasting.

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I want to give you a quote.

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Now, this was actually a news article where there was some Roman Catholics who were trying to explain Lent and even Fat Tuesday.

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And this is Kim Mandelkauf.

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She is the director of the Office for Worship for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

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And she explains, some use the day as a chance to clear their homes of any delicious and perishable foods so as not to waste any while they abstain from meat, dairy, and sugar.

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Going on, it says, Friar Schlag also points to fatty foods like eggs, milk, butter, and cheese.

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In the mid to late 1900s, Christians were instructed to abstain from eggs and dairy products in addition to meat, so no milk, no butter, no cheese, he explains.

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And that's why on Tuesday, the last day before Lent, everybody said, well, we have to eat all the butter that's left and all the cheese that's left, all the eggs that are left.

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And so that became Fat Tuesday because you had to eat all the fat, or it was just wasted because you couldn't keep it for 40 days.

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That's the end of the quote from the article.

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It just seems strange to me that you would begin a season of self-denial by having a day of self-indulgence.

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But not everybody, I'm sure, does that.

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And again, the term Fat Tuesday doesn't necessarily reference you getting fat, but rather, according to these people, it references getting rid of the fat in your home because that was part of what you're fasting from, those indulgences.

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So again, somebody may have a little bit of a difference of opinion on that, and that's fine.

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But in my opinion, having a time of fasting, it's probably best that you don't proceed it with a time of overindulgence.

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Okay, the big question for many people is, isn't this just for Catholics? And why even talk about it on a Calvinist show? I mean, Calvinists aren't going to do this, right? Well, not exactly.

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Lent is not just a Catholic thing.

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Lent is practiced by many Christian groups, including the Catholics, but also Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Anglicans, and Lutherans all have within their denominations groups that practice Lent.

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Now, I have major issues with Roman Catholic theology.

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I've talked about it on the show before.

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I don't believe that Rome in their official teachings actually teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

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So I have major issues with Rome.

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I think Lent is not my issue.

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This is not an area that's just Catholic versus Protestant.

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That's a mistake.

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The reason why I think that we think that often, especially in the area I'm in, is we tend to run in Baptist circles, and Baptists typically do not practice Lent.

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And so Baptists tend to separate everything from Catholic and Baptists, and they don't see really anything in between.

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They don't look at other Protestant groups.

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And so because of that, if it's not Baptist, it's Catholic in the minds of some, and that's not right.

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As a Reformed Baptist, as I said, I don't recognize or celebrate Lent.

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Baptists tend to not celebrate as many liturgical holidays as do other Protestants.

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We do celebrate things like Good Friday.

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We celebrate Palm Sunday.

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We celebrate Easter.

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But all of those have a coinciding biblical reason.

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Like, for instance, Palm Sunday is the day Jesus, what we call the triumphal entry, went into Jerusalem in the celebration of the palms, riding on the back of the donkey.

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And then we have, of course, Good Friday, which is the celebration of Jesus' death, the crucifixion, dying for our sins.

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And then, of course, Easter Sunday is the celebration of the resurrection.

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So all of those, while they are specifically liturgical days, they all have a biblical part that coincides with it.

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And even like Christmas, the birth of Jesus.

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But when it comes to things like Lent, there's not really a biblical command there.

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There's not even really a biblical example, except for Jesus being in the wilderness for 40 days.

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And that's why the 40 days of Lent are 40 days, is because it's supposed to be connected to Jesus' fasting in the wilderness for 40 days.

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And again, I'm not speaking for all Baptists.

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I know there are some Baptists who celebrate Lent.

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I'm not saying that not any Baptists do, but typically among Baptists you'll find less who do than you will in, say, Episcopal groups or Presbyterian groups or Anglicans, Methodists, things like that.

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You'll see that a lot more among them.

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And so you have, certainly it's practiced by Catholics.

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And again, I have many issues with Catholic theology, but that's not the reason for today's show.

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It's sort of practiced depending on your denomination.

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It can be practiced or not practiced.

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But the real question a lot of people have, especially since this is conversations with a Calvinist, is do Calvinists observe Lent? And as I said before, you can't really say yes or no.

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The answer is, well, it depends, because Calvinism is not a denomination.

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That's an important distinction.

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Calvinism is a theological system, which is found within several denominations.

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There are Calvinistic Baptists.

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There's the Presbyterians, whose foundation is Calvinistic.

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There's Calvinistic theology, even in Anglicanism.

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So Calvinism is found in several denominations.

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And many people today believe in the TULIP, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints.

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And if you believe in the TULIP, you typically identify yourself as a Calvinist.

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But really, the TULIP is focused primarily on soteriology, which is the doctrine of salvation.

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And when we talk about being reformed, reformed theology, that's a much more full-orbed understanding of the Bible, referring to things like covenant theology and the relationship between Israel and the church and things like that.

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It's a broader, overall theological system.

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So it's not possible to say what all Calvinists do, because there's so much diversity among Calvinists.

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There are people who are Calvinist who are not really reformed in the sense of having the full-orbed understanding.

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And so Calvinists cannot be defined as to they do this or they don't do that.

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It doesn't really work that way.

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Some Calvinists reject all holidays.

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I have a lot of friends who are this way.

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They don't celebrate any holidays except for the Lord's Day.

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That's the only day they celebrate.

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They say, we get 52.

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This is the statement they usually make.

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We get 52 holidays a year.

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Every Lord's Day is a holiday for us.

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And so we don't celebrate anything else.

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And a lot of those guys, they don't celebrate Christmas.

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They don't celebrate Easter.

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They don't do any of that.

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They only have the Lord's Day.

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And that's fine.

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That's their conviction.

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And that's how they see the celebration of holidays.

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But in the larger reformed tradition, there are churches that do celebrate Lent.

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As I mentioned earlier, Presbyterians, there are some Presbyterians that celebrate Lent.

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There are some Anglicans that celebrate Lent.

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There are Calvinists who do.

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And I want to read to you a quote.

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This is from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship.

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This is an online resource.

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And this is what it says.

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Many congregations in the Christian Reformed Church today observe Lent, but in a way that seems unusual to most Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, and Anglicans.

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It is an approach already reflected in a 1933 editorial in The Banner, where longtime editor H.J.

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Kuyper described both an increase of interest in and opposition to observing Lent, then firmly concluded, we believe both views are one-sided.

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So let me stop the quote right there.

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So in 1933, apparently there were some who thought it was a good idea, some who thought it was a bad idea, some who said we should absolutely do it, and some who said we should absolutely not do it.

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And what Kuyper is saying is both views are one-sided, and so both views are sort of extremes in his opinion.

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So Kuyper said, I'm going to go on with the quote, Kuyper said no to the ancient idea that Lent should feature a lot of spiritual disciplines like fasting.

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As Kuyper argued, if we strengthen our piety during Lent, aren't we likely to become lax afterward? I think that's a good argument.

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Aren't we supposed to be always excelling in the work of the Lord, 1 Corinthians 15, 58? Well, yes, we are.

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And he goes on, he says, don't Lenten obligations lead us to legalism? Well, certainly they can.

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At the same time, Kuyper said yes to the importance of a season of preparation for Easter, citing a longstanding reform practice of sermons on Jesus' sufferings as a fitting approach, end quote.

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So as far as this person, H.J.

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Kuyper, what he's saying is there are ways to celebrate Lent, but there are good ways and bad ways.

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And the bad ways would be those things that tend us towards legalism and tend us towards things that are not good.

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But the right things would be preparing for celebration of the resurrection, which we do in a particularly unique way on Resurrection Sunday.

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So that would be his answer.

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His answer is not the final word, but he is speaking particularly from a Calvinistic perspective in the question of do Calvinists celebrate Lent? Well, yes, but often different than do other groups.

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So there you have it.

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Ash Wednesday is not necessarily Catholic.

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Just because you see somebody with ashes on their head, well, they're probably Catholic, but might not be.

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And you may want to ask them.

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In fact, this is my call to you today, my encouragement to you today as we begin to close this short show for today.

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If you see someone as you go out into your business, as you go to school or whatever, if you see somebody with ashes on their forehead, take a minute to ask them about that.

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There's a good chance that those ashes are there because they have in some way made a profession of faith.

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They have in some way said that they want to celebrate and prepare for the season of Easter.

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You may be speaking to a Roman Catholic and you may have an opportunity to ask them, hey, how do you understand the gospel? How do you understand what Jesus did for you? And maybe get into a longer conversation about what the Bible says about the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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So this is an opportunity.

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It's not every day that people walk around with marks on their head saying that, yeah, I confess faith in Jesus Christ, because that's essentially what that mark is saying.

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And not everybody who has that mark is a believer.

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So you have the opportunity to see somebody with a mark, walk up to them and say, hey, can you tell me what that is? Can we talk about it? Can we have a conversation about this? And that could lead you into a wonderful gospel opportunity.

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So that's my encouragement for you today.

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I hope that this lesson, this podcast was helpful and encouraging and educational.

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Thank you again for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.

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My name is Keith Foskey, and like always, I have been your Calvinist.

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May God bless you.