This is the third message in a series on the mission vision statement that has been prepared of the last year by the elders and the master planning team of Bethlehem found in this little booklet and if you don't have one,

would you raise your hand? We've got ushers with some of them in their hands because I'm going to refer to this a lot today and I'd really like everybody to have one in your hand and you can have it and keep it.

So if you don't have one, just let them see your hand as they walk by.

There's a study guide that I'm trying to produce a week ahead at a time and it's yellow

and it's out on the table there and if you would like your family to sort of catch on and

learn more about this and dig into the biblical basis for it, take a study

guide and make it part of your family devotions or something like that during the week. Last week we spent the whole time on page one, the cover.

Our mission is we exist to spread passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples.

And I hope that by the time we are done with this, you have that memorized.

18 words, very simple to memorize so that if anybody ever

says to you, where do you go to church? Well, it's like the church downtown, the one where

you can drive in off the freeway, it's got the big red banner up there, a passion passion for God but no sign on the side to tell you

what it is which we hope the elders will change soon if you find the money to do it.

That's the church I go to and if they say next well what kind of church is it where what do they believe

You say well the heart of it is this we exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things, for the joy of all peoples.

And then they'll have all kinds of questions and then you're into it and you can unpack what

all that means.

But that's the front page. That's why we exist. That's the most central way of saying

the heartbeat of what makes us tick. Now, just to summarize the center thing here is the supremacy of God in its relationship to joy.

What we believe is that God is so supreme, so glorious, so infinitely superior to every other

value on the earth that if you know him and if you have fellowship with him

that's the only possible source of abiding solid joy.

...