26 October 2025 Sunday Sermon
The word this morning, as taught by Pastor Goodwill Mkhabela, echoed from Genesis 2 with a quiet intensity, not to inform but to awaken. It was not a new revelation, yet it felt newly opened, a door long known but freshly entered.
Humanity, the pastor taught, was never designed for confusion or wandering. Genesis 2:8 reveals that “the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed.” Man’s creation and his placement were not separate events. The garden was the intended context of human life, a place where purpose, order, and communion intertwined. Everything man would ever need was contained within that divine ecology.
In verse 9, another mystery unfolds: “And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow… and the tree of life was also in the midst of the garden.” The placement of the tree in the centre signifies more than geography; it represents alignment. Humanity was meant to live from the centre, not from the edges of existence, but from the heart of divine design.
Then came the voice that still governs creation. Genesis 2:16 introduces the word of permission: “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden.’” That is divine generosity speaking. Permission means that there are things one is authorised to do because God has enabled them. The capacity and the consent are built into the same command.
But permission alone is incomplete. Verse 17 brings the word of prohibition: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat.” Boundaries preserve design. Prohibition is not punishment; it is protection. It reminds that purpose is guarded by restraint, that to live within limits is not to be caged, but to be preserved.
Later, the pastor turned to verse 27 and spoke of the word of warning, the third strand that completes divine order. Permission, prohibition, and warning together form the architecture of obedience. They are not random restrictions; they are coordinates for life. To violate them is to violate design.
From this, Pastor Mkhabela spoke of a truth both sobering and freeing: that the Bible is not a book of rules but a manual of restoration. “Everything you are supposed to do,” he said, “the ability to do it is inherent in that same thing.” What one needs to become is already written within, the manual merely reveals how to unlock it. The things of God are not imported; they are uncovered.
The manual of heaven exists to awaken potential. Potential is what can be done but has not yet been expressed. Holiness, too, is not external striving but internal reflection. When God said, “Be holy, because I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16), it was not an unreachable standard, it was an invitation to draw from what already exists within. Holiness flows from holiness; creation reflects its Creator.
Then the pastor spoke of the two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:9). The Tree of Life, he said, represents Jesus. The Tree of Knowledge represents independence from God. The first gives revelation; the second gives information. The knowledge of good and evil cannot produce life because it separates the act from the source. “We are meant to live from the person of Jesus Christ,” he said, “not from the knowledge of good and evil.”
Jesus’ own words in Matthew 11:28 sounded differently in that moment: “Come to Me, and I will give you rest.” Many come to church, yet few come to Christ. Many enter the garden but never reach the tree. The invitation remains the same, to live from the Tree of Life, to draw from divine knowledge rather than human effort.
When one lives from that tree, creativity is reborn. “When we reach the Tree of Life,” Pastor Mkhabela said, “we are rich, because with it we can create from what we want.” The statement was not about material wealth, but spiritual empowerment, that divine life itself carries creative fire.
The word burned gently but deeply. It reminded that holiness is impossible without God, that potential remains dormant without obedience, and that rest is unattainable without returning to the centre. The trees still stand, permission, prohibition, and warning, and between them flows a quiet truth:
To live from the presence of God is to live as one who creates from within the flame.
