The speaker talks about their wrist injury, surgery, and recovery, which led them to focus on studying and understanding God's representation in the Bible. They discuss the significance of God's actions and symbols like the pomegranate on the high priest's robe, emphasizing the connection between God's power and the 12 tribes of Israel. The speaker questions traditional interpretations and suggests exploring the perspectives of rabbis for deeper insights into biblical symbolism and meanings. Hello and welcome to Biblically Wired, everyone! It is the new year! So, kind of a little bit of an update. I broke my wrist. I have had surgery. I have been under some pain and rehab and unable to text, research like I usually like to do. So, I have been reading a lot and I have been enjoying a lot of audio books and a lot of preaching and peaching through my headphones. It has been awesome. And I have been praying a lot about, okay, Lord, here we go. It is 2026. We are at the start of this year. What is it that we want to take apart? Well, I know what I need to take apart and I guess that is what I think God is calling me to do. And that is this whole God thing. How is God representing Himself as He is the main character of the Word? And we are going to go through different parts of the Word where we have to look at it. We need to spin it around and look at it from God's perspective. Why is God wanting this, asking for that, doing this? What is He trying to say? And I think what I have learned or been learning or I am in the process of learning is that God is coming to earth. He is demonstrating His love. His greatest demonstration, of course, was through the sacrifice of His only Son shedding blood for our salvation. I mean, you do not get better than that. But also, God is using something He created to speak to us and to demonstrate who He is. But what we end up doing as human beings is we end up limiting Him to that. So, for instance, we call Him a person. Well, He is not a person, right? But we do not have like this human language. We call Him a Father. He calls Himself a Father. Jesus calls Him a Father. But we cannot limit Him to Father. He is a Creator. He predestined things. He not forecasted, but foreknew things. He planned Jesus' death and Jesus' coming long before we were born. He understood that those that He can hear and those that can see and those that crave redemption will find Him. He will make it obvious. He will make it obvious who He is. And there is just all this timing that went into the fact. If you look at it from His angle, the timing that went into the fact that He called Abraham. Okay, so He calls Abraham and He promises him that He is going to make him a nation. Well, guess what? Abraham was part of the first nation. You can ask any archaeologist. You can ask any historian, anybody good on ancient background. Mesopotamia was the first nation. It was the first time tribes came together and made a move, made a city. They had everything in Abraham's city that you could even imagine. You know, they had the shops. They had the bartering. They had the trade. They had the wheels. They had military. They had a rudimentary stock market. They had so much. And so God could have promised Noah a nation, but Noah wouldn't have known what it is. Right? So when we look at it from God's perspective, my mind, it just goes katawapi, if that's even a word. Like, I had a dream recently that God was taking me deeper and deeper into water. And I literally woke up and thought, Lord, Lord, no, no, no, no. Because my brain is already struggling. Sometimes I don't know, Lord, am I on something or onto something? Are you revealing something to me that I have never heard anybody talk about? Or am I crazy? And I went out with my very good friend, Brenda. I would also call her a mentor, a sister in Christ. And I was going over what we're going to talk about, this pomegranate. And I'm going over with her what Rabbi said about this pomegranate. And I said, why have I never heard this stuff? It's so stunning. It's so beautiful. It's so out there. It's so representative of the heart of God. I can barely breathe. But if I go to any of the Christian texts, any of the commentaries, any of the sermons regarding the pomegranate, I don't get any of this. Why? Why can't we work with rabbis? Why can't we dig a little bit deeper? Am I crazy? Am I crazy? Okay, so what am I talking about? And these are the kind of things we're going to go into. We're just going to dip in a little deeper and ask ourselves, is there something in the history of this happening we have never seen? We are going to drop down on Mount Sinai. And we are going to go around Mount Sinai from every avenue like someone looking into the windows of a house to see everything. Do I want to buy this home? It's on the market. Am I going to go with this house? What can I learn about this house? It's important to me to know everything about this house. And that's what we're going to do, okay? So the pomegranate, why am I talking about this? This is coolio. This is as good as it gets. Brace yourself. Put on your seatbelt. Check yourself out. Tell everyone I'm off my phone. I'm in another vibe, okay? So get this. Get this. In Exodus chapter 28, God goes into this, not rendition, but these orders regarding what the high priest is going to wear. Okay, the high priest, you guys, is the holiest position in the nation of Israel. Therefore, the holiest, most set-apart position in the entire world. And God is going to tell the people what they're going to wear. What is Aaron going to wear? What are his sons going to wear? Okay, like think about this from his perspective. Do we not go in and talk about what Princess Diana wore? Do we not talk about the way certain people dress? Do we not have our own vibe and our own closet of colors, right? What did God choose? The high priest, what did he choose the high priest to wear? This is actually monumental. This is actually blow the roof off. What did God want him to wear? I like to think about it as this thing, like Oprah's favorite things. Have you not ever read Oprah's book club or thought about her favorite things at Christmas or checked out her list on Amazon? I have. So here we are. What does God choose his high priest to wear? Now we have to realize other ancient kingdoms had high priests. They had all these people wearing all this stuff, whatever it was. Earrings, turbans, gold. We don't know what they were wearing. Maybe they were to look like they're suffering. Maybe they were to look like they're sexual. Maybe they were to look like they're wise. We don't know what these other temples had and what they wore. But guess what? They had a way their temple workers were to wear, and now so does God. So God is going to make an emphasis by saying what his high priest will wear. If we were there in this time, we would know what the other dudes wear. So we would know what God's emphasizing. But we weren't there then, and we don't know what the other dudes are wearing. So let's just think about what God is asking his high priest, his first high priest to wear, realizing in the back of our brain that Jesus is the high priest now. That's what's cool. Okay, so I'm not going to go into every part of the high priest's outfit. He has a turban. He has a sign on his forehead, basically, Holy to God. Imagine, it's etched in gold plate on his head, Holy to God. He wears this 363 days of the year. Now, he has this blue ephod. It is blue. It's this fabric that is kind of like a backwards apron. No, a forward apron, actually. It's like an apron. And he has this breastplate with stones representing the 12 tribes of Israel over the heart of the high priest. He also has stones on each shoulder, and etched on each side are six of the tribes. So he has the 12 tribes listed not only on his shoulder but across his heart. What does this represent? This represents that we are close to the heart of Christ and that not only are we carried by his heart but by his power and his strength. We are knit to him. Beautiful, beautiful stuff, right? So we know also that his garment was not torn when he was grieving like other garments. Other people who are grieving could tear. They would tear right by where their heart is. They would tear that fabric. Not the high priest. The high priest could not tear his fabric. It was not to be torn, and it was not to have a seam. We know that Jesus' clothes were not torn. So we keep bringing this back and bringing this back. We get these roots. We see it played out in the New Testament, but not this part. Okay, get this. Around the hem of the high priest, there is going to be pomegranates. They are made out of this red crimson, this purple, scarlet, and blue fabric. And these pomegranates are made and they are hanging from the hem of this robe. And in between each pomegranate is a gold bell, okay? Douglas Stewart, if you listen to my teaching, Douglas Stewart on Exodus, excellent commentary. Excellent commentary. I'm going to tell you what he says about the pomegranate. The pomegranate was a prized fruit of the ancient Near Eastern world. This is page 614 of his huge commentary on Exodus. He says it denoted abundance and beauty, but it was without theological significance otherwise. Okay, so it was just for beauty. That's what he said. You go into the Bible Hub and you look up other things, and they will say that the church is an orchard of pomegranates, as in Song of Solomon, Chapter 4, where the pomegranate is compared to the beauty of the bride. So it's a beautiful fruit. It's a beautiful fruit. Now, I can say things are both and, right? I am not dissing these commentaries. I am not even close to the student that they are, all right? That's not what I'm doing here. But I'm just going to say, again, as I've said many times, why don't we ask rabbis what it meant to them? Just out of curiosity, what in the world, why do we have hanging pomegranates on the hem of the high priest's robe, and why do we have bells? Now, think about this. In everything God created as his home, and we might go into some of that in some of these. I'm not sure. But in everything he created as his home, there is no sound from anything. There's no harp. There's no instrument. There is a shofar that is sounded on certain days. There is a shofar or a trumpet that makes a sound on certain days. But this is not a daily thing. The only sound that comes into the holy place is the tinkling bells of the high priest or the sound of his prayers, all right? Crazy. Crazy. God, you're picking one sound, not an animal sound, not the whooshing of leaves, not the crackle of a wood fire, but you're picking the tinkling of a bell, okay? Now, when it comes to the bell, Douglas Stewart says, it says in Scripture, and it does in 2834, that the bells' tinkling need to be happening on the hem of the robe lest Aaron die, okay? So, Douglas Stewart says, and I like this a lot, he says it's interesting because this bell would be on the robe, and this isn't going into the Holy of Holies. I need to say this quick. There is a wrong belief that the high priest had bells on his robe so that when he went into the Holy of Holies once a year on Yom Kippur by himself, that if they quit hearing bells, they would pull him back with a rope. And neither of those things are true. First of all, he didn't wear this outfit on the Day of Atonement. He wore a simple white seamless tunic on the Day of Atonement. And when he went in to bring the incense to the altar and the blood to be sprinkled on the Ark of the Covenant, he wore this outfit and then he took it off and he never wore it again because once someone was in the presence of the Lord, they never come out the same. So, it's a totally, totally different thing, all right? So, this was the other 360 plus days a year that he wore this tinkling bell thing. So, there is a tabernacle that God designed and it has three parts. There's an outer court where the priests do their work, where people bring their sacrifice. Then there's a building with two portions, the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies. God is in the Holy of Holies. Aaron would go into the Holy Place and this is what the verse is talking about. With these bells on his hem, he would go into the Holy Place and out of the Holy Place, all right? He would go in to bring the incense, to burn the incense. He would go in with the other priests who were taking care of the table of showbread and the menorah or light, all right? So, when he went in, there's bells. When he went around, there's the sound of bells. And when he goes out, the bells recede. And Douglas Stewart says, it's just like going into any home. We don't approach the king's home casually. We talked about this in another teaching that God has certain ways that they approach him and it makes sense, right? It makes sense. You don't just run up to the top of the mountain where Moses is when God said, stay back. It's holy ground. So, this bell sound was like almost not like a doorbell, but here we come and here we go. And here we come and here we go. Now, God knows where they are. But he is doing this to teach the people that out of respect, when you're with me, you're not sneaking around, okay? This is Douglas Stewart's theory on the bells. Okay, so now we're going to get into the pomegranate and bell theory from rabbis. And I love, love, love it, okay? I love this so much. I want everyone to know this. And I want you to test the spirit on this. Test the spirit. Like I said, am I on something or onto something? Get this. Okay, rabbis say the pomegranate is not a beautiful fruit. The pomegranate is a fruit with compartmentalized fruit pieces. So, if you look at the inside of a pomegranate, there's going to be these six to eight portions. I got super into studying this. It doesn't look like it's consistent. And they're full of these pomegranate seeds that are both sweet and tart. So, what a rabbi says, a rabbi says that an apple is flush. An apple is united through and through. There's not compartments with an apple. And that an apple is a mature Christian. An apple is someone who is united with God in a uniform way, comfortable in their skin, like an old sage. Okay? An apple is beautiful to a rabbi. So, the rabbi said if God wanted a beautiful fruit, he would have put an apple on the hem of the priest's robe. But he didn't want a beautiful fruit. He wanted this complicated pomegranate. And to them, it represents a newborn believer. Somebody who is born again, is onto something, is starting to develop this picture of who God is, they know God is good. They might know God is powerful and mighty. They know that God healed them from something. Maybe they used to cut themselves. Maybe their marriage needed healing. Maybe they've been healed from an addiction. Maybe they just were in a total mess. And God came, and they know by His good hand, things were cleaned up. There's no doubt. And they have turned their heart and their soul over to God alone, and they're beginning to worship Him alone. Now, now, something happens. Or they think the picture that they have of God, the picture they've seen, isn't quite matching their experience or their circumstance. Now they have questions. Now they're like wondering, why are there so many starving people, and what is God doing with that? And what about the salvation of someone who never, ever heard about Jesus? Do they ever get a chance? They start to question the, maybe the trauma done to them or someone they love. How could God allow that, if He's a good God? And now we're in the pomegranate mode. We're in this mode, maybe, where God, I swore He asked me to quit my job on Wall Street and go into ministry. And man, it's been fabulous, but I've hit a wall. I have hit a major wall, because now I have cancer. And I've seen other people healed. I went to Africa on a mission trip, and we went into a waiting room, and people walked out when we laid hands on them in the name of Jesus Christ. But He won't heal me. Me? I left a job on Wall Street, and He's not going to heal me? Forget it. Forget it. I want nothing to do with Him right now. I'm over this. This is the pomegranate life, guys. This is what it is. We have all, or we are all pomegranates. There's portions of our life that have not married to the truth. We haven't had this resilient walk with Jesus Christ. We haven't persevered through the muck and mud. And I'm speaking for myself. I have been a pomegranate on that high priest's robe for decades. If anyone knows my story between the spiritual abuse and the sexual abuse, I clung to Jesus' robe. I just couldn't get enough of Jesus Christ. I wanted to know everything about Him. I wanted to know the way He chewed His food. I had a crush on Jesus. But Jesus didn't really match God, the Old Testament God, the God that should have the power to stop my traumatizer. But it's very fascinating because Jesus perfectly represented God. There is no difference between Jesus Christ and the God of the Old Testament. As a matter of fact, Jesus Christ is Malik Yahweh who represents God 48 times in the Old Testament. We see Jesus Christ. He is the exact representation of God. There is no difference. So how do we marry all this then, right? So this is the journey. This is the journey that I've been on and probably some of you have been on. And I want you to tell someone, God actually thinks you're beautiful in this pomegranate position. Can you imagine? I'd like to think about it, guys. Think about it. Think about it. Think about it. You have a son or daughter that is out there. You have a son or daughter who will not turn to you for help. You have a son or daughter who has never acknowledged your existence, your provision, your protection, nothing. But now, but now they turn to you and you are able to help them. Just imagine the beauty of the pomegranate. So what's more beautiful to God? The person who is in the know, the old sage rocking and rolling or this person who has now turned to him and asked him for help and lays his heart down and his heart of stone is becoming a heart of flesh and he is crying and weeping out and he is there with trembling and fear before the throne of God. What is more beautiful? The apple or the pomegranate, right? Well, get this now. What about the sound? What do rabbis say about the sound? This just blew my mind. They say that the sound of the bells on the robe of the priest is the sound of the pomegranates crying out to God in their misery and in their lack of faith and their lack of understanding. But in this knowledge that they have that there is nowhere else to go. So I've been a bell on the robe of the high priest for decades, you guys, for decades, crying out, asking God, please, please put my son on the billboard of heaven. Please, please reach down and help him in his addiction. God, please, please, God, please hear me day and night, night and day. You don't sleep. I have come to that throne again and again and again in pain and misery and not trusting, but knowing I have nowhere else to go. That is the sound of the bell. That is the bell. According to rabbis, that is the sound God wanted. The only sound God wanted in the holy place, the only sound he wants attached to his entire tabernacle is this bell crying out. And to me, guys, I was thinking about this and I said, Lord, it is like the sound of the dead coming to life. It is like the sound of a river starting in the dry desert. It is the sound of, it is like a cracking sound against the gates of hell because I went from unbelief to belief and I am now hanging on to the fringe of the robe of the high priest and I am making noise to the only God who has the power, who has the presence, that has the love, that has the preplanning, the foreknowledge, the omnipotent, the powerful God, the one God of the universe. That is the sound, guys. That is the bell and the pomegranate on the robe of the high priest, the holiest person in the world. That is what God chose. God chose us in his frailty to be represented every time that high priest was performing every single action from the consecration of the priest, from the sprinkling of water, from the sprinkling of blood, from the wave offerings, from all of his daily duties, always with him, always representing everybody in the family of Abraham from which we have been grafted in on his shoulders and on his chest and the sound of all of us from the fringe of his robe and I am just blown away. I just want to cry this out. I want to tell the hopeless that God is near, that they are beautiful to him, that in their wrestling with God, in their longing to understand and their longing to be used, in all of it, all of it, that cry from that pure heart, God is glorified and that sound is ringing in heaven. That crack, that crack of the bell, that wonderful glorious sound is being heard in heaven. So never feel like God is putting you off, that God is not prioritizing your questions. We don't ever have to feel like we actually are not represented on that high priest robe, that we're lucky enough to get near the throne. No, no, no, no, no. God has called us as close as possible. His ear is tuned in to the sound of our cries and it is all beautiful all the time, 24-7, 365. Guys, guys, our hearts, our questions, our goals are bringing him glory and I'm so grateful. So I hope this was encouraging. Help a newborn believer know, yes, you're a pomegranate. We are pomegranates. I don't know for how long, but I'm happy to be a pomegranate right now and I'm hoping more of these pieces are coming together for me and for you in the name of Jesus. So it's 2026, peeps. There's a lot going on in the news, but keep your chin up because God is on the throne and he loves you. God bless you.