I can't think of a more perilous message to communicate the people than to stand there

and announce the unconditional love of God.

There is a border to the love of God, and we cannot understand the attitude of God

to its fallen creation as being exclusively one of love.

Because the Bible tempers its extolling of the transcendent majesty of the love of God

with these warnings of the limit of his love,

beyond which there is divine wrath and there is divine abhorrence.

Now I know that what I'm saying here goes counter to the message that is being preached every day

from preachers that I never find in Scripture.

And it is this concept, the unconditional love of God.

Where did this idea come from?

That God's love is unconditional.

And what does this concept communicate?

Suppose I am preaching to non-believers, and I'm saying to those people,

God loves you unconditionally.

You know, they tell us in seminary that when you preach, you don't preach one sermon.

You preach three sermons.

There's the sermon that the people hear.

There's the sermon you thought you preached, and then there's the sermon that was actually preached,

and they're not the same, itself.

We have to understand that.

And I ask myself, what does that impenentant, unconverted person hear when they're listened to a sermon,

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