God's word. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, according to the promise of life, the life that is in Christ Jesus. Two, Timothy, my beloved child, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I thank God whom I serve as did my ancestors with a clear conscience as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. As I remember your tears, I long to see you that I may be filled with joy. I'm reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and now I am sure dwells in you as well. For this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self-control. Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me, his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace. which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me. Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. Guard the good deposit entrusted to you. read that far in God's word. Through Adam we all had a bad heritage, that's the bad news, the fall into sin for the human race, but the good news is the gospel news that God gave us our godly heritage. When through Adam we had sin reigning and death, then God sent grace through Grace through his son, the Lord Jesus, that's greater than our sin, that through Christ, grace would reign instead of sin and death. In 2 Timothy chapter one, we see this truth and it brings us to our main point that God gave us our godly heritage. First, we'll see how God gave a spirit of power, love, and self-discipline so that we testify and suffer for the gospel, verses one through eight. Next, we'll see God saved us and gave us the grace and power to live a holy life, verses nine to 12. And thirdly, God gave us the spirit within us to help us to guard our heritage. Verse two, as Paul is writing to Timothy, he calls him my beloved child. He speaks first here about the one that he had led to faith, Timothy. He's like a spiritual father to Timothy, but Paul also saw that God was already at work within Timothy. Timothy's own family and his own heritage. We see this in verse 5 where Paul wrote to Timothy, So here Paul's explaining a godly heritage to Timothy. that because Timothy had the faith walk of his mother and he had the faith walk of his grandmother as part of his own story, part of his own godly heritage, that it applied to Timothy, therefore, in a specific way. So in verse six, he tells Timothy that because of this, because this is your family line, your mother and your grandmother, because faith has been passed down to you, therefore, let me remind you, to fan into flame the gift of God which, It was a means to serve God with passion. So it's interesting that there's so many grandmothers in the Bible. We have genealogies, don't we? There's always a lot of family stories. However, the word grandmother is itself used in the whole Bible once. It's right here in your passage. That is Lois, the grandmother of Timothy. Lois was a devout Christian woman, a godly woman, as many other Christians at that time. Lois was also a Jewish woman, and she had instructed her own daughter, Eunice, in the scriptures. Later, Lois had also instructed her grandson, Timothy, in the scriptures. So this three-generation family, Lois, Eunice, and Timothy, lived in a town called Lystra. So in verses seven and eight, he begins to describe what that should look like then for Timothy's life. To replace timidity, kind of a fearfulness, in Christ, he's to be given courage. The new heritage in Christ to replace his old heritage in Adam is that of courage. It's interesting that the word he uses here, the Greek word for courage is dunamis, from which we get our English word dynamite. It's courage with a power to it. Additionally, our new heritage is a lifestyle of love as opposed to hate and self-control of the mind as opposed to distractions of the mind. So in Christ we're trained how to think with a certain discipline and self-control. And what's the result of all that? Verse eight, we see the command from Paul to Timothy, do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord. So here Paul is directing Timothy that because of your godly heritage, because of the faith line in which you stand, do not be ashamed. of the testimony about our Lord. Why would Timothy be tempted to be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord? Well, as Paul continues to write, we see that it could be because of the suffering that Timothy would endure. Look at the second half of verse eight. Don't be ashamed, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God. It's suffering. that brings concerns. It's suffering that could bring someone who is in a third generation faith family to begin to wonder about or be ashamed about the testimony of our Lord. And it's not personal power that gets us through. It's not personal abilities that help us to suffer for Christ. It's rather the power of God. the way he described it in verse eight, but share in suffering for the gospel, how? By the power of God. It's the power of God that helps us to suffer for the gospel. So Lois and Eunice suffered in Lystra. This place is known, it's mentioned through the Book of Acts and here in 2 Timothy. The gospel, when it turned up there, caused great controversy in their town. Lois knew all about suffering, specifically suffering for Christ and for the gospel and Eunice knew all about suffering. There was great controversy and Timothy himself had also suffered in their town and this was and is the heritage for the believers in Lystra, for Timothy's own three-generation family and for all Christians since. There's plenty of suffering. in this world for God's people, even since our Savior himself, of course, suffered at the cross. Christ's apostle Paul also suffered in prison. Each of us believers are called to walk the same heritage of Timothy here, the same heritage of Paul, the same heritage of our Savior. and take our share in the sufferings. Do not be ashamed of the testimony by our Lord, nor of me as prisoner, but share in the suffering for the gospel by the power of God. Now, I say all this, and just this comment before we move on, seems to me, I have a mother, I have grandmothers who've passed on, I'm around a lot of mothers and grandmothers, for that matter, fathers and grandfathers, it seems that most of us try the hardest we can to protect our children and grandchildren from any suffering at all. From any source at all. And Paul, when he uses the word grandmother finally, only once in the whole Bible we find the word grandmother, he's talking about a family that knew how to suffer. So what was it that Lois and Eunice would say to Timothy about his suffering? The best that they could say would line up with what Paul said, because Paul's carried along by the Holy Spirit here. It's what God himself would say. Hopefully, godly Christian mothers and godly Christian grandmothers would say to their children and grandchildren the same thing that God would say, the same thing the Apostle Paul here would say. That's not exactly how God our Father operates his kingdom is to try to protect all of his children from suffering from any source whatsoever. That's not exactly how God operates the kingdom or the family of God. Sometimes God calls his people to suffer. Sometimes God calls his people to watch their children suffer or to watch their grandchildren suffer. and then to counsel them about the Christian approach to that suffering, rather than to do everything possible to intervene and to prevent that suffering. This is a significant lesson, it's another sermon all by itself, but I thought I'd draw that out before we move on. Verses nine through 12, God saved us and gave the grace and the power to live a holy life. Let's appreciate God's equipping here for our calling to suffer. Verse nine, God saved us. Praise be our God because he saved us. We're rescued from death, we're saved from the heritage of Adam, what we call the heritage of death. What's next after being saved? After being converted, what's next? He writes that in verse nine. God called us to a holy calling. In other words, a holy life. That's what's next. After you're saved, you're expected to live a holy life. By grace, we're rescued from a heritage of death into a heritage of life by grace through Christ Jesus, but it's a heritage that includes an expectation and command to live a holy life from there forward. Verse 10, Christ had abolished our heritage of death. Verse 11, it was of this good news that Paul was appointed a preacher and an apostle. Verse 12, that's precisely why Paul himself was suffering, because he's a preacher, because he's an apostle, because he's a Christian at all. For the gospel, he's called to suffer. And he said this in so many words in verse 12. Let me read it again. This is why I suffer as I do. Wow, that's pretty clear instructions from God through his teacher and author, the apostle Paul. Paul had been appointed to suffer. Yes, he had been appointed an apostle, but the position automatically included suffering for the gospel. Paul understood that, he embraced that, and he's teaching it to Timothy here. you live in a heritage of sufferers. And Paul's convinced of God's ability to guard Paul with God's grace and God's power, that he might continue in the faith despite the suffering that's required. And where we're following God's logical train of thinking here, we clearly understand that it's God's grace that equips us to live out our godly heritage to suffer and to live holy lives. That's why we study the Reformers, because every time we've studied a Reformer, it's a story of suffering. but it's a story of those who lived holy lives by God's power and his grace despite their suffering. That brings us to our third point, God gave us the spirit within to help us to guard our heritage. Verse 13, Paul put it all together and applied this entire pattern of healthy spiritual truth to Timothy and in that way passing on the godly heritage from Paul to Timothy. It's clear, mentor to mentee, teacher to student, professor to Timothy. Whatever truth Timothy heard from Paul, these truths Paul must now also keep following himself. The trust in God during the sufferings that Paul demonstrated, Paul was also to learn and to repeat, to have for himself the trust in God during suffering. The love that Paul had for God, Timothy was also to have that love for God. The teaching that Paul gave, the solid Christian teaching, was the same teaching that Timothy was to embrace for himself and then to teach as he became a minister, to embrace and to believe. The very same teaching Timothy was to then pass on. You receive the heritage, you pass on the heritage. Timothy receives the heritage and passes it on. So in verse 14, as he wraps up this section, whatever instructions Paul was guarding, Timothy was also now to guard. Whatever Paul had deposited into Timothy's mind, Timothy was now to consider it as a good deposit into having a high spiritual value. Whatever Paul entrusted to Timothy, Timothy was now to show himself trustworthy. How do you do that? You pass it on to others exactly as you received it. And look at the first four words of verse 14. We'll end with this and then we'll go to our story of Reformer. By the Holy Spirit, see that, the first four words of verse 14? How is it that Timothy could guard the good deposit entrusted to him? It's by the power and assistance of the Holy Spirit of God who lived inside of Timothy. The Holy Spirit who had helped Paul to guard the teaching would now be the same Holy Spirit would help Timothy to guard the teaching. So verse 14 was the description of passing along godly heritage from one generation of Christians to another. in the church of Jesus Christ. So speaking of godly heritage, allow me to spend a few minutes telling you a story of one who was entrusted with the truths of the Bible, one of the reformers, and we appreciate and guard these truths down to today. Remember how Luther had her helper, a sidekick, Melanchthon? Remember how Batman had a sidekick, Robin? If I were to say to you, Zwingli had a sidekick, and who was it? If you didn't have your bulletin, if we hadn't said it earlier today, I wonder if you'd know the answer. It's Pastor Henry Bollinger. That's who we'll talk about tonight. It's okay if you don't know anything really about Pastor Henry Bollinger because he's not one of the prominent reformers. However, it is worth hearing his story precisely because of how extensive his influence was. He's impacted you. He's impacted me. Bollinger in many ways was greater than his master Zwingli. Bollinger is part of our godly heritage. So the story is that he was born in 1504 in a town called Bremgarten, Switzerland. He was the youngest of five sons of the village pastor, listen to this, he was a Roman Catholic priest. Wait, as you know, Marriage was ordinarily forbidden for Roman Catholic clergy, but Henry's father somehow was allowed an exception. This was not some scandal. He did have an exception, a viable, authorized exception, and all we know is that he was required to pay a yearly sum to the Catholic Church in order to continue to have a wife and family, which he did. More about him in a moment, but back to Henry. Henry Bullinger's father had been preparing young Henry for the priesthood from an early age. Remember when the Reformation began? October 31 of which year? 1517, and so if you're looking at the year 1504 that Henry was born, quickly go forward and you know he would be 13 years old. when the 34-year-old Luther was nailing the theses to the church door and the Reformation began. So then fast forward two years, now Henry is 15. And the Reformation is only two years old. Henry was sent off to college in 1519, just 250 miles away from his home in Switzerland over in Germany. And during college, Henry began to read. He began to read the early church fathers. These are the early Christian authors who we refer to from the first to the fourth or sixth century, authors such as Augustine. Chrysostom, who they call Goldenmouth, Ambrose, Origen, some of those names. He would read those authors. And the one consistent thing that stood out to Henry, the thing that he learned that stuck with him the rest of his life from reading those ancient authors was the insistence about the specialness of the Bible. and therefore that the word of God is top priority in our lives. And this caused Henry to personally dig in to his own study of the scriptures. This is all before Henry ever heard of a guy named Martin Luther. God was at work in Henry's life and heart, such that one of the top five Reformation principles had already been worked into Henry's heart, the importance of the Scriptures. Later, of course, as you know, this became one of the top five focus points of the Reformation everywhere. The Bible alone, Christ alone, faith alone, grace alone, to the glory of God alone. By 1522, Henry Bullinger had completed both college and a master's degree, so at age 18, he returned back from school in Germany, back home to Switzerland, his hometown, Bremgarten. He became the head teacher of a monastery over in Kappel, Switzerland, soon after. So, unlike so many Catholic monasteries of the early 1500s, Bullinger taught his monks directly from the New Testament. because he had a passion for the scriptures alone. Bollinger himself wanted to learn more, so soon after this, he took five months to travel and basically study, independent study we might call it. He traveled to Zurich, Switzerland for this, and it was there that Bollinger was first introduced to Pastor Ulrich Zwingli, a pastor at a church in Zurich, Switzerland, becoming famous himself for being one of the big reformers there with Martin Luther. Well, Bollinger learned from him and others more about what God was doing across the countries in Europe. The Reformation, as they would come to call it, and God was spreading the movement from Germany to Switzerland, and Bollinger fit right in. After five months of study, Bollinger returned back to his monastery in Kappel, Switzerland, and he convinced all of the monks of the core truths of the spreading Reformation movement. By 1525, now at 25 years old, Bollinger's father, remember I said I'd come back to him, the Roman Catholic priest, declared himself a Protestant. And as such, he was removed from his Catholic priesthood in their home village of Bremgarten, Switzerland. So these townspeople, however, they also wanted to leave the Catholic Church, had been well-taught by him, and so they invited young Henry to take his father's place as the church's pastor, a Protestant church now. And it was there in his hometown of Bremgarten that young Pastor Henry Bullinger's pastoral work and preaching gifts and teaching abilities became apparent to more and more people. And while there, he also met and married a former nun ever so appropriate, a godly woman named Anna Edlishweiler. Their marriage was loving and lengthy. Their home was blessed by God with fruitfulness in many ways. With so many sicknesses and deaths of infants in the 1500s, this is no small achievement. They managed to have 11 children who survived into adulthood. Talk about fruitfulness. But not only were they fruitful in numbers of children in their home, but also five of their sons became pastors, bearing more spiritual fruit for the movement of the Reformation. In 1531, something very significant then happened in the movement and the Reformation in Switzerland. Over in Zurich, Switzerland, the great Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli died. He was killed suddenly in a battle. What was the church in Zurich, Switzerland to do? Who would lead the cause of the reformation there in Switzerland? The Lord had been planning all along for a successor to Zwingli, and the church in Zurich quickly came to realize God's rich wisdom and providence in preparing this young pastor, Henry Bollinger, for the church in Zurich. So they called on Pastor Henry Bollinger to leave the Bremgarten Church and come to the Zurich Church to take up ministry after Zwingli. So on December 9, 1531, at age 27, Pastor Henry Bollinger became the pastor of a church that was grieving the sudden and heavy loss of the great Ulrich Zwingli. Bollinger started on the path that Zwingli had blazed, but soon it was Bollinger himself who was forging his own way and making his own impact on the church and on Switzerland, and on the Reformation, as I will seek to now prove to you. Pastor Henry Bullinger was a devoted pastor whose home was constantly open to the hungry, to the lost, and to spiritual seekers. Although his salary was meager, he refused all gifts from those that he helped, no matter what country or wealth they came from. Instead, he gave from his own small income to local hospitals and other institutions of mercy, anything to help God's people, and to help the cause of the Reformation in Switzerland. And those familiar with history about these times, you'll know that in 1553, a certain person came to the throne over in England that they came to call Bloody Mary. And while she reigned for a violent five years, many pastors from England fleed for their lives, literally, finding help over in Zurich, Switzerland, with Pastor Bullinger and his hospitable church. And those same folks from England Later, when they returned back home to England, when it was safe, became leading Puritans. So here, as I said I would prove, Pastor Henry Bullinger over in Zurich, Switzerland, had a significant impact on the Puritans in England. Pastor Bullinger's preaching was powerful, and his pen never rested. For 40 years, from 1531 to 1571, he preached a course on Sundays, but he also like a perpetual school, taught and preached on many other occasions for the benefit of his visitors from other countries. There were times during the height of the Reformation that Bollinger preached as often as seven times a week. In addition, Bollinger wrote commentaries on almost every book of the Bible, plus he wrote letters back and forth maintaining remarkable supportive correspondence with Christians and theologians that he began to know around all of Europe, and around all the world. He even corresponded with kings and queens from various countries. Pastor Bullinger wrote more than Luther and Calvin combined. If you know anything about the avid writership of Luther and Calvin, that's quite an accomplishment, and that's just his published works. He also had a pastor's heart, and he produced one of the first Protestant books for comforting the sick and dying. What about Bullinger's letters? If you've read the back of your fancy bulletin, there are 9,500 letters in existence from Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli combined. So how many would you guess that Pastor Bullinger wrote? 12,000. It's impossible to measure the impact just of his letters for encouraging and supporting the leading reformers all over, Germany, France, Poland, Hungary, and beyond. As it turned out, in God's providence, Pastor Bullinger gave the Reformation a humble, wise, and patient order. He gave order to his theological writings and order to his dealings across the various churches in various countries. Pastor Bullinger's order was recognized in 50 of his sermons. that got written down and published in five groups of ten sermons that became famous. They were called decades. These five sermons, 50 sermons, were called decades. They were an organized overview of the truths of Christianity. These printed sermons were read as far away as England. having yet more of Bollinger's influence there, some people who had got to know him personally. And in 1577, we know that some areas in England made these 50 Bollinger sermons into required reading for every pastor. They even asked them to read one per week and they quizzed them on these sermons every three months. Bollinger also wrote a doctrinal statement in 1566 called the Second Helvetic Confession. This is an organized and comprehensive statement of the Reformed faith. This confessional statement was officially accepted in Switzerland, Germany, France, across Eastern Europe, and even had an extensive influence in England, Scotland, and the Netherlands. Even down to today, the Second Helvetic Confession actually remains the single most widely accepted confession in the Reformed tradition around the world. And to give you one more indication of the large influence in Bullinger's teaching, he earned the nickname the Father of Covenant Theology. So as we wrap up the story of Bullinger, I need to tell you one more thing. In the year 1575, at age 71, Pastor Henry Bullinger died. He had suffered with a long illness and he was deeply mourned by many there. in his own local church. It was sad that as he was buried at the church in Zurich, Switzerland, he was buried amid the sincere and lively regrets of all classes of his townspeople. I think we can somewhat imagine. Before we close tonight, though, I want to offer a conclusion back to our passage, back to our sermon. and connecting Pastor Bullinger and the Reformation to what we talked about in terms of our own godly heritage. So the conclusion or application to our sermon is this. By the Holy Spirit, we live out the pattern of our godly heritage. By the Holy Spirit, we live out the pattern of our godly heritage. So my concluding story, I've got a story for you. It's designed as a very specific purpose. It's designed as an encouragement for a certain person, if this is you, Anyone who did not grow up in the church or did not grow up in the Reformed faith, my message to you is simple. Please don't feel left out. Welcome. This heritage is yours the moment you embrace Jesus Christ because whenever God brings us into his church, that moment we gain this godly heritage. It belongs to us now. You're a child of God and so all that God has belongs to you now. So I illustrate with a story. While walking through the forest one day, a man found a young eagle who had fallen out of a nest. He took it home and put it in his barnyard. What else do you do with a young eagle that you found in your walk? You put him in your barnyard, right? Where it soon learned to eat what the chickens were eating. One day, a zookeeper passed by the farm. I don't know why a zookeeper is walking past the farm. Go with me on the story. Okay, a zookeeper passed the farm and asked why the king of all birds would be living in a barnyard with the chickens eating chicken feed. And the farmer replied that since he had given it chicken feed and trained it to act like a chicken, it had never learned how to fly. And the farmer went on to say, since it now behaved like a chicken, it was no longer an eagle. And the zookeeper said, oh, no, no, that is an eagle, and it can be taught to fly. So the zookeeper worked at it. He picked up the eagle and lifted it up towards the sky, The eagle, however, jumped right back down to eat with the chickens again. The zookeeper picked the eagle up a second time and took the bird up to the roof of the house this time. But the eagle scurried back down the roof once more, helping himself to the chicken food. Finally, the zookeeper picked up the eagle and took him outside the barnyard, all over to the nearest highest hill. And there the zookeeper held the king of the birds high above his head. The zookeeper holding up the eagle. The eagle looked around. The eagle looked back to the barnyard where the food was. The eagle looked up to the sky. It took a little bit. The zookeeper aimed the eagle towards the sun. And it happened that moment that the eagle started to tremble. And slowly, the eagle stretched out his mighty wings. And then with a triumphant cry, the eagle soared away across the skies. Why do I tell you this story? I already told you why I tell you this story. If you were not raised in the Reformed faith and you're hearing about these things and wishing that you had that heritage, oh, my friends, it belongs to you. You're an eagle. You're a child of God. God gave you the full heritage of his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and his church, and everything of all the stories in the church. Paul is yours, and Timothy's yours, and Luther's yours, and Zwingli, and Melanchthon, and Bollinger. Along the way, someone might have told you that you're just a chicken, or you might have told yourself this lie, that if I didn't have such and such for parents, or such and such for a church when I was in elementary school or high school, that I might be missing out. Oh no, no, no. The truth is, you've been given this godly heritage, you've been transformed into an eagle. which makes you fully equipped by the Spirit of God dwelling in you to walk with Christ and help us to launch a revival, if not a reformation, in our day. By the Holy Spirit, we live out the pattern of our godly heritage. As Paul wrote it to Timothy here in verse 14, by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you. Let's pray. Father in heaven, give us grace to live holy