Ash Wednesday

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Ash Wednesday and the Meaning of Ashes

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Today is going to be an interesting day. By the way, my name is Mike Abendroth. Today, we're going to look at the topic of, it's gonna be interesting, what is today?

You look on your religious calendar, what does today say? What does today say? It's Wednesday, that's part of the clue. It is what kind of Wednesday? Gloomy Wednesday? Frigid snow Wednesday? How about ash Wednesday?

That's correct, you heard me say ash Wednesday. I remember the old cartoon back in the LA Weekly, I think by Mueller, and it showed a guy with kind of angst on his face, and it was just kind of a portrait shot, and it showed a bunch of, it looked like kind of dog food on his forehead, smashed on there, and then underneath the caption was only two words, hash Wednesday.

As in corned beef and hash that you put on your forehead? Well, today is hash Wednesday here at No Compromise Radio ministry, and so we've got a question. What is ash Wednesday, and should you celebrate it, and how did it come about, and all those kind of things.

It's very interesting. I was looking online and found all kinds of stimulating ash Wednesday stuff. I did find that it goes back at least to the 10th century, and it has some biblical symbolism, repenting in dust and ashes, and so you've got an idea of repentance, purification, penitence, that kind of thing.

And basically what would happen in the early church, they would say, and even now people would say, you've got some kind of horrible sin or serious sin, and so what you do is you live the ascetic life, you live a life of denial, of repentance, of sadness, up to and during Lent, leading up to Easter, and one of the ways you show your internal repentance and contrition is by putting ashes on your forehead.

Now back in the old days, they might have garments that were sprinkled with ashes, and they would have some kind of John the Baptist rough garments sprinkled with those ashes. It does say here, Lynn Gilliam, editor of Pockets, the Upper Room, beginning in the 10th century, the observance of ash Wednesday became a general right for the church.

The ashes, which were a symbol of purification in the Old Testament, remind us that we are mortal. In many churches, the ashes are made by burning the palms from the previous year's Palm Sunday. That's interesting, I didn't know that, so you have to save them up.

Ashes are placed on the forehead, usually in the sign of the cross, in a ritual known as the imposition of ashes. As the ashes are placed on the forehead, words such as these are spoken, remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

That is what God said to Adam in Genesis 3 .19. So, I like the verse, I like it that we are supposed to remember that we will one day die. I just in the news last week was the young 16-year-old basketball player in Michigan, they were 19 -0, this particular team, he scored the winning layup, I think it was 52 -50, last second in overtime, hit the layup and then fell down and died.

And so, anything that reminds us of the fragility and the temporary nature of life, I think that's good, but what about this right, and what about Lent, and what about asceticism, and what about denying ourselves?

Why Protestants Adopt Ash Wednesday and Lent

Is that something a Christian should do? Should you do that? We had a young man who was a Greek Orthodox in our neighborhood, and he came over and he said, I'm giving up diet Coke and chocolate for Lent.

He said, what are you giving up for Lent? And I said, I don't give up things for Lent, I do the opposite, I eat extra things for Lent, because the Bible never says anything about asceticism and self-denial post-resurrection.

Jesus actually has been raised from the dead, and we are to enjoy life and enjoy all the good things that God has given us, underneath his lavished grace, this banquet that he has given us, we are to enjoy those things.

And so I said, I don't give up things for Lent, I take on extra calories. One of the guys here at our church, Jack, he told me his Ash Wednesday story, he was younger, I don't know, 14 or 15, and said he wanted to go out and party, to his mind at least, but he had to say to his mom he had to go to Mass, and so he went out for Ash Wednesday service, but did not go, went and partied, and then came home, and on his way home, he forgot that he was supposed to have some ashes on his forehead, and so he quick put out a cigarette, take the last puff, and now put it out, and then put the cigarette butt to his forehead to make the sign on the cross.

And that's about all that'll get ya, that's for sure. So the question is, what is Ash Wednesday? Do you celebrate Ash Wednesday? And I have another question. Why are many Protestants celebrating Ash Wednesday?

Why are they saying, you know what, we've got to be somber as we lead up to Easter? Why is that? There was an article in the paper a couple years ago about how Protestants are really enjoying this tradition.

For thus you are, and to thus you shall return, and leading up to Easter, you have this trend, the writer said, quote, toward more sacramental forms, and it is not surprising to see the recovery of imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday.

Daniel K. Dunlap, vice president of Houston Graduate School of Theology, and a liturgy expert, that's interesting. Why are United Methodist churches, Memorial Lutheran churches, why are Christian church as disciples of Christ, why are they doing these things?

Well, I think the same reason that churches are doing that is the same reason we have many, many Charismatics and many, many Messianic Jews. And that is, instead of walking by faith with only two ordinances, we have baptism and the Lord's Supper.

There's a desire for more. There's a desire for tactile touch, taste, response, to do something, re-celebrate the festival of booths, et cetera, and so there's just this natural gravitation towards doing more, and this is really going back to tabernacle and temple worship.

It's interesting in the book of Hebrews, the writer is writing to these Hebrews who, can you imagine, the temple was still up and the glory and the grandeur of the second temple and the great Solomonic temple that Herod had refurbished and made wonderful, and you've got smells, you've got trumpets, you've got singing, you've got sacrifice, you've got the marble, you've got the gold, and it's just a sensual, and when I mean sensual, I don't mean in some kind of nasty pornographic way, but it is something for your senses.

Can you imagine being a pilgrim in the Judean wilderness, walking out for one of the great feasts and just seeing the grandeur of the temple? I just was on the Temple Mount not too long ago and I could still sense how wonderful that must have been.

Well, here you have all this wonderful temple and you can see it and you can smell the incense, you can smell the sacrifice being burnt, you can see the blood, you can hear the priests singing, you can listen to the trumpets, it's all there, and then all of a sudden Jesus dies.

He is the sin bearer and the temple is needed no longer and the veil is rent from the top to the bottom, this thick kind of curtain ripped from the top to the bottom signifying that God ripped this and we are done with this sacrificial system because there's been one sacrifice for sins, see Hebrews 9 and 10.

And so therefore the temple is rendered obsolete and to give the exclamation point, God uses Titus and he comes and destroys and sacks and rampages Jerusalem, including the temple in 70 AD. And now the writer of Hebrews writes to these Hebrew Christians who some have probably been to the temple and he says, do you know in spite of all that, Jesus is greater.

Jesus is greater than the temple, he's greater than Moses, he's greater than Aaron, he's greater than the old covenant system, he's greater than everything in it, he's greater than the grandeur of the temple, he's everything.

And so when you don't see Jesus as everything, you have to resort back to additions, additions to Mosaic law, celebrating the festival of booths for instance, you've got to revert back to these kind of things.

And so we have Jesus the risen savior, why do we now have to reenact some kind of like, some with Mel Gibson like, passion of the Christ flagellations? Why do we need to do that? One man said here, Jeremy Rutledge in the same article about Protestants loving Ash Wednesday, I put my thumb into a bowl of ashes and I put the ashes on someone's forehead and tell him he's going to die.

It's incredibly powerful. Actually he's an American Baptist. That's a powerful thing. Well, my question is, it could be powerful, it could be meaningful, it could be emotional, it could be touching, it could be all kinds of things, but the question is, do we do this?

Should we do it? And more importantly, is it biblical? My name is Mike Abendroth and today we're talking about Ash Wednesday. Do you celebrate Ash Wednesday? Do you celebrate that kind of thing and you walk around?

I see lots of people here in New England and I forget. First, I think they forgot to wash their face and then they're showing their public piety on the outside, which I also have a problem with, but we'll get to that.

What Lent Is and Why Asceticism Misreads Christ

So we've got Ash Wednesday leading up to Lent. I mean, during, starting Lent, leading up to it, up to Easter rather. And so my next question is, what is Lent? What is Lent? And Lent, it has basically this.

It has this in mind. It's preparation for the believer to get ready for Holy Week and then the death and resurrection of Jesus. Almsgiving, self-denial, a lot of denominations do it. And basically these 40 days are derived from Jesus spending 40 days out in the wilderness and in the desert as he is getting ready for his public ministry.

And so as Jesus had to go through some of these things, so do I. And again, you see us running right back to the same error, the hermeneutical, the interpretational error that if Jesus did something, we ought to do it too.

And what would Jesus do falls short here again. I think probably for the Lent days, I'm going to do the exact opposite because we have the bridegroom. We don't need to say, well, let's fast, let's be ascetics.

Jesus is risen. I just walked the Via Dolorosa and it is sick to go through that and watch all these people whose minds are enslaved to Satan and to sin go through all this funny business when Jesus has been raised.

People, it was amazing when I just was in Israel. And so we took the church group that we had to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Orthodox and Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, and Catholic site where Jesus was supposedly crucified.

And then they laid his body down after they took it off the cross and then they buried him. And it's all there in this church that different denominations fight over. And I took my daughter to the little spot where you're supposed to kneel down and you can kiss the rock where Jesus was crucified.

But we just kneeled down and just looked at it. That's what we wanted to do. It was quite fascinating. Although it looked like we were kissing it. If you see any pictures on the websites, that was not us kissing.

And I'd rather kiss the sun unless you perish versus kiss the rock supposedly that Jesus was crucified upon. And then you see the slab where they supposedly laid the body of Jesus after he died. And people, lots of Russians especially, were taking their scarves off, ladies, and then rubbing it on that slab and then rubbing that on their face, kissing it, laying on it, rubbing there.

I didn't see anybody with Bibles. It was rare to see a Bible in Jerusalem. Lots of little miscellettes and stuff like that and little booklets, but not many Bibles. And so they were laying things on that to get a special anointing, a special blessing.

And so I, when I'm in Israel, I bring my Bible, but it's in my iPad. And so that way I can pull up any message that I need to. And so if we're at the Pool of Bethsaida, I can teach John 5. If we're at the Pool of Siloam, I can teach John 9.

I just have everything ready there. And so if it's raining, we have to switch things up. I'm just ready. And so I figure, well, if you can get a special anointing, a special blessing, if you rub something on that, then maybe it'll work for my iPad.

So sadly, it was the first generation iPad. I don't have the second generation iPad, but I took that 64G iPad and I rubbed it on the slab that Jesus was on. And I got some pretty mean looks. Although my group, they thought it was funny.

At least I thought it was funny. It was a no compromise moment. Should have taken a picture of that, but I was too proud to stand there waiting for the flash to go off as I was rubbing my iPad on the thing while everybody else was drooling on it, kissing it, and everything else.

Friends, that's all shadows. You read Hebrews, Hebrews will remind you that we have Jesus, the risen Savior, who gave us the perfect atonement. And we don't need to go back into traditionalism and superstitions and shadows when you have the real thing.

That just creates a false faith. That just creates something that you do. That means Jesus's death, burial, and resurrection isn't enough, and you've got to add things. You've got to add things by subtraction, by not doing something.

Asceticism is not something that's good. Abstinence during Lent doesn't do any good. We're gonna look at 1 Timothy in just a moment. But when you say, I'm gonna give something up, you're doing exactly opposite of what the Bible teaches.

You don't need to abstain from sex. You don't need to abstain from chocolate. You don't need to abstain from Diet Coke. You don't have to abstain from anything for a religious reason. If you want to abstain from certain things because doctor's orders or you're on a diet or something like that, fine.

But if you're abstaining from things, I'm giving up chocolate for God during Lent, friends, you are deceived. You do not understand the gospel. Go back to Romans chapter three and chapter four and see the imputation of Christ's perfect righteousness into the account, the spiritual account of the believer and see the sins of the believer credited to Jesus' account, as it were, at Calvary.

And then Jesus raised from the dead. And if you are right with God, declared just, declared perfect, you are loved by God the Father as much as the Son is loved by the Father because of justification.

Then Romans 14 and 15 apply. And that is, you don't have to be denying yourself to make yourself more pleasing to God. You don't do that at all. You should be enjoying the rich banquet of God. So on today's No Compromise Radio Ministry, I'm trying to get you not to be silly, not to be ascetic, not to be denying yourself, not to be trying to show how biblical you are or how pious or devout you are by some external sign.

You should, if you were to do it, you should quick rub it off before you walk out of that building because that doesn't do anyone any good. It's just showing how you've received it and who you are and it's making a statement of your biblical ignorance is exactly what it's doing.

And so monasticism doesn't help. Abstinence doesn't help. If you'd like to be in abstinence and be in monasticism, there are other religions that focus upon those. Christianity doesn't. So stop doing that and look to the cross.

See, your problem is solved by looking to Christ Jesus, his life, death, and resurrection. And so I would encourage you to read Mark this afternoon and you'll see that just because Jesus spends 40 days fasting in the desert and experiencing temptations, it doesn't mean you do that.

It doesn't mean you do that. I see Jesus. How about this? If you're going to use that theology and that philosophy, then what about Jesus later who often is eating and drinking and having banquets with sinners?

That was a scandal to some people. Remember, they said to him, John's disciples often fast and pray and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking. Jesus, can you make the guest of the bridegroom fast while he is with them?

But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them. In those days, they will fast. Luke chapter five. We believe in justification by faith alone and you cannot improve your position by doing some kind of Ash Wednesday.

Is it good to be reminded that you're going to die? Yes, but Lent is a farce. Ash Wednesday is a farce. When Lent begins, Ash Wednesday today, you ought to be saying to yourself, I don't need to have any ritual, any habit.

I don't have to say this is a time where my sinful activities and habits are forsaken. That is the Christian life. When you look to Christ and you see his great death, it should make you say to yourself, I ought to sin less.

A God who would love me so much and give himself for me, I think I ought to sin less. You don't concentrate on this kind of sinning less and denying self for 40 days beginning on Ash Wednesday. That's a tradition.

There's no biblical warrant. You don't get some blessing from God in response to a unbiblical, a-biblical tradition. And don't tell me about ashes and repentance and mourning that you can see that in 2 Samuel 13 and Esther 4 and Job 2 and Daniel 9.

Don't tell me that because that proves nothing. You can see ashes in the Bible as a symbol of repentance and not say this is what we're going to do because it forgets the cross. Remember the drama of redemption, the history of redemption.

Redemptive historical theology is a must. Now I did go to Catholic Dictionary online and it says the Wednesday after Quinquagesima Sunday, which is the first day of the Lenten fast, the name Des Cenerum, Day of Ashes, which it bears in the Roman Missal.

I thought that word Missal was kind of cool. Is found in the earliest existing copies of the Gregorian sacramentary and probably dates from at least the eighth century. On this day, all the faithful, according to the ancient custom, are exhorted to approach the altar before the beginning of Mass.

And there the priest dipping his thumb into ashes previously blessed, marks the forehead, or in the case of clerics, upon the place of the tonsure, of each the sign of the cross saying the words, remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shall return.

The ashes used in the ceremony are made by burning the remains of the palms blessed on Palm Sunday. Forget that Jesus wrote in on Monday, but that would mess up our year, the previous year. In the blessing of the ashes, four prayers are used, all of them ancient.

The ashes are sprinkled with holy water. Wow, no vampires allowed, and fumigated with incense. I'm sorry, I mean, it just, when Jesus isn't enough, what do you do? You add stuff. And so the Roman Catholic Church, over the centuries, that's exactly what they do.

Add, add, add, add, add, add, add, because Jesus Christ's death is not sufficient for them. And they have to slay him every week on the altar, every Mass, and when Jesus isn't enough, friends, nothing is enough.

Nothing is enough. The celebrant himself, be he bishop or cardinal, receives either standing or seated. The ashes from some other priest, usually the highest of dignity, and those present. In earlier ages, a penitential procession often followed the rite of the distribution of ashes, but this is not now prescribed.

There can be no doubt that the custom of distributing the ashes to all the faithful aroused from a devotional imitation of the practice observed in the case of public penitence. Well, at least they say where they got it from, not the Bible, but this devotional usage, the reception of a sacramental, which is full of the symbolism of penance, is of earlier date than was formerly supposed.

Well, it doesn't go back to the Bible, that's certainly for sure. And so here, even Catholic Online, newadvent .org, would tell you what you need to know. Friends, you ought to remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

But you also ought to remember that there are more chapters in the Bible, and that is Jesus, because of his life, death, and resurrection, has told us by his life, death, and resurrection, and by his own words, that we don't have to fall prey to some kind of silly superstition.

That's all it is. You ought to read Mark 7 and see Jesus blister the religious leaders concerning defilement and blister them for the traditions they have brought upon themselves. Is it going to be sin if you go get ashes put on your head?

Well, there's no sin to say you can get some old palm leaves, burn them, put some ashes on your head in the shape of a cross, sign of a cross, and then remember that you're going to die. Friends, that's not the issue.

The issue is bigger than that. The issue is first day of Lent. Lent, and somehow living a life of asceticism, ignoring Colossians chapter two, ignoring First Timothy chapter four. We are to enjoy life, and you're not to have certain days where you're extra special, penitent.

You're not supposed to have extra days for 40 days. You really focus on not sinning. If you have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, won't that be an everyday thing? But this is some kind of thing to do, and external rights help assuage the conscience.

That's what they do. That's why we do all these things. Stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight, incense, smells, bells, because it helps people who have a hard time believing. See, faith has an object, and faith is trusting in someone that you cannot see, and that person who we cannot see has said, would you like to remember me?

Why don't you have communion? That's where we remember Jesus, not by having some Ash Wednesday. So if you celebrate today, Ash Wednesday, well, it's a free country. If you celebrate Ash Wednesday, it's also a free country.

But I want you to know, it does not help your status before God. It does not help you be more pleasing to God. It matters not. Jesus has given us his word, and his word says, drink, eat, imbibe all the goodness God has made, because you are a redeemed sinner, saved by the total, free, distinguishing grace of God, and therefore, enjoy creation, my son.

Enjoy food, my daughter. Live it up and enjoy life, because of Christ's death and resurrection. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church, firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text. Please come and join us.

Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400. The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.