Satan's methods don't change, and in this book the prophet Ezra records a series of identical wiles of Satan. The main tactic recorded in Ezra was the repeated effort to persuade the Persian emperor and authorities to quash the building project. Th Samaritans use all their arts and powers to bring this about. They use other methods too: constant harassment and interference, regional bullying, and incursions and attacks. But the big efforts that are recorded in this book are the series of appeals to the emperor of the Medo Persian Empire. Satan will try, early in any work, to go to the seat of authority. You see it in history time after time. Consider the Roman Catholic Church. In the very beginning, in the first centuries of the church, the churches bore the message of the word, and they bore it faithfully. But very quickly corruption set in. As early as the first century and the second century there were some churches being corrupted. By the fifth and the sixth centuries, what we would call historically the Roman Catholic Church was well and truly on the rocks as far as truth was concerned, and away from biblical doctrine, so it went on for a very long time. Satan knew that the source of proclamation of the word was, in those early times, the churches, and as soon as the church after Constantine became organised and centralised, Satan went for the seat of authority. Corrupt this organised church at the top! Bring in unconverted people; bring in people whose views completely sabotage by satanic doctrines of demons, and you will wreck everything. That has always been his method. Then came the Reformation. It went back to the word of God. Yes, there was organisation. Luther and his fellows organised the church. The French organised their Reformed Church. But above all that there was a great drive go back to the word of God, and the authority of the word prevailed. All over Europe, there were gatherings of converted people, Christians – some in organised regional churches, many quite independent – and they all shared this in common in the early days subsequent to the Reformation: the word of God is the only authority. But before you know it, the devil had gone to that source of authority, and the big movement begins, even as early as the 15th century, to pollute the word of God, to downgrade it, and to cast doubt on it. It reached its climax in the 19th century with the movement for higher criticism that swept through Christendom. Go for the authority, is the satanic method. Go for the seat of information. Cast doubt on it, discredit it, bring it down. It is the same in the book of Ezra. ‘We have got to stop these people. We will do things locally: we will attack them; we will rob them; we will discourage them; we will hire their own councillors to plot against them and bribe them. But the main thing we will do is go to the authority and get the work stopped. It is an implicit exposing of Satan and his methods.
Why rebuild the temple first? 42,000 plus people had in the first movements of Jews come back from the Babylonian Empire to their homeland, and the first task they are given is the reconstruction of the temple. Now you can suggest a number of alternatives. What about the reconstruction of the wall of the city? There was insecurity, constant attacks and troubles. Wouldn’t that come first? Why the building of the temple? Why not what the people wanted to do: build their homesteads, build up the smallholdings and their farms and their food producing installations? Why not let them do that first? Why the temple? God's command and his provision and his protection is for the construction of the temple, because the message is supreme. God's word, God's purpose, must be declared. God's standards must be published, and it all begins with the temple. That is the great symbol of God's provision of mercy. That is the great symbol which teaches God's absolute unapproachability and holiness, except by the means that God provides. That is the symbol of God's mercy and available pardon and forgiveness. This has got to come first. It is by this means that the message will go out into the surrounding nations to whom Israel was commanded to have a testimony. If they build their farmsteads and open their local synagogues, and the sacrifices are not offered, and the central message doesn't go out, then there may well be blessing in the Judah, but it won't be seen anywhere else. Their capital is Jerusalem. That's the centre for all international relations and trade and everything else, and that is where the symbols and the focal point of the commands of God and his word must be established. So they had to begin there. There is a principle running from that throughout time, because in the New Testament the order that prevails is that of local churches that are autonomous, and self-governing under Christ, and taking their authority from the word of God. Yet you also see in the New Testament, the apostle Paul and others working through large population centres. Paul will go to the big cities. He will go to Corinth; he will go to Ephesus. He is longing to get to Rome; that is greatest ambition. He is unable to go there except by remarkable providence of God through his own arrest and transportation there, but that is where he goes. There was a term to describe this that was adopted in the 19th century by a number of people, and it was the Apostolic Metropolitan Ministry, and that is why Spurgeon chose the term ‘Metropolitan’ for a church in the centre of London. He believed that it was possible that from the centre of London for a local church to have a double privilege. It would be called to serve where it was, and it may even be called wing the word further afield. So it became the Metropolitan Tabernacle; that was his scheme.