Who Are The True Jews? (Revelation 2:8-11, Romans 2:28-29, Romans 10:1-13) Series

So if we have ears, what should we take away from Jesus' words to the angel in Smyrna?

Jesus' focus is on evangelism. Jesus expects us to be open about Jesus. We believe that Jesus is Lord, and Savior. We believe he is the promised Messiah. We follow him, obeying his teaching. We give Jesus our allegiance. And all of this is public knowledge. We don't hide who we are.

So Jesus' focus here is on evangelism. And that means, probably, that my focus should be on evangelism as well. But I think that what Jesus says about the Jews is something that a lot of Western evangelical Christians really need to hear, especially right now.

Who is the true Jew?

From Jesus' perspective, the word "Jew" is a religious category, and not an ethnic one. The true Jews are made up of people who follow Jesus. We are the true Jews. And Jewish synagogues who set themselves up against the church, and persecute the church, are not. They can call themselves whatever they want. They can self-identify as Jews. But anyone who sets himself against God's people, aligns himself with satan.

This might strike you are incredibly insensitive, and anti-semitic, but Jews for thousands of years have debated who belongs in this category of "Jew." At the time when Jesus walked the earth, a group of Jews called the Essenes believed that the nation as a whole had apostatized. But this little group of faithful Jews retreated into the wilderness, and committed themselves to living faithfully toward God in a way that the nation as a whole did not. They waited there in the expectation that the promised Messiah would come soon. Even today, Orthodox Jews in Israel draw the circle of who is a Jew much more narrowly than Western evangelical Christians. An Orthodox Jew would call most of the people in Israel either "Israelis," or "Zionists." But they aren't willing to call them "Jews," because their life and government isn't built around faithfulness to God, and to his Torah. Politicians in Israel are just as careful to call their citizens "Israelis." There are Christian, and Jewish, and Muslim "Israelis."

So in Revelation 2, when Jesus, who was born a Jew, of Jewish parents, refuses to call the people of a Jewish synagogue "Jews," and instead calls them followers of satan, Jesus is doing nothing new. There has always been a sharp debate among the Jewish people, about where you draw the boundary between Jew, and outsider. And not only "where" you should draw the line, but on what basis. And I should say again, that this debate has happened among people who would call themselves Jews. This is an internal dispute.

We do the same thing. We draw a circle around the boundaries of the Church. We say some people are on the edges of that circle-- they are what scholars call a "sect." And other groups of people are outside of the circle, even though they claim to be Christians. If they are outside the circle because of what they believe, we call them a cult-- Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses. If they are outside the circle because of behavior they promote, rather than doctrine, we describe it differently, by saying they've fallen away, or turned away, or apostatized. "Churches" who promote transgenderism, or who say that all religions point to the One God (Unitarians), or who worship multiple gods, would belong to that group.