It doesn’t take long to build the walls of a city if you can only get the whole of the people at it. If the Christians of this country would only rise up, we could evangelize America in twelve months. All the Jews had a hand in repairing the walls of Jerusalem. Each built over against his own house, priest and merchant, goldsmith and apothecary, and even the women. The men of Jericho and other cities came to help. The walls began to rise.
This stirred up Nehemiah’s enemies, and they began to ridicule.
RIDICULE
is a mighty weapon.
“What do these feeble Jews?” said Sanballat. “Will they fortify themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they make an end in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of the rubbish which are burned?”
“Even that which they build, if a fox go up, he shall even break down their stone wall,” said Tobiah the Ammonite.
But Nehemiah was wise. He paid no attention to them. He just looked to God for grace and comfort:
“Hear, O our God; for we are despised: and turn their reproach upon their own head, and give them for a prey in the land of captivity: and cover not their iniquity, and let not their sin be blotted out from before: for they have provoked thee to anger before the builders.”
Young man, if you wish to be successful in this world, don’t mind Sanballat or Tobiah. Don’t be kept out of the kingdom of God or out of active Christian work by the scorn and laughter and ridicule of your godless neighbors and companions.
Next, these enemies conspired to come and fight against Jerusalem.