Keep Building

Nehemiah 4:1–23

By the time we come to Nehemiah 4, the rebuilding of Jerusalem is producing visible results. Sections of wall are beginning to connect, gaps that had remained open for generations are starting to close, and verse 6 tells us that the wall has already reached half its height. Jerusalem is beginning to look different. And that is precisely when the opposition becomes serious.

We have already met Sanballat and Tobiah. At the end of chapter 2, they mocked Nehemiah and questioned what the Jews were doing. But in chapter 4, ridicule becomes the threat of violence, and eventually the pressure becomes so intense that some of the builders themselves begin wondering whether they can continue. Identifying the work God has placed in front of us and beginning it is one thing. Continuing to build when that work becomes difficult is something else entirely.

That happens in almost every important area of life. We begin trying to repair a marriage and discover that rebuilding trust takes longer than we expected. We begin confronting an area of sin and discover that repentance does not instantly remove every temptation. We try to become more faithful parents, repair a relationship, serve somewhere God has placed us, or simply grow in our walk with Christ, and eventually we discover that there is still a lot of rubble. Nehemiah 4 shows us what faithfulness looks like at that moment. Faithfulness is not the absence of opposition; it is refusing to let opposition pull us away from what God has given us to do.

When the Rubble Becomes the Story

The first pressure the builders face is not an army attacking Jerusalem. Sanballat begins with something much simpler. He tries to convince them that they and their work are ridiculous. When he hears that the wall is being rebuilt, he becomes “angry and greatly enraged” and begins mocking almost every aspect of the project: “What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it for themselves? … Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, and burned ones at that?” (Neh. 4:2). Tobiah joins him, claiming that even a fox climbing onto their wall would knock it down.

They are trying to make the builders ashamed of even attempting the work. Yet what makes Sanballat’s ridicule effective is that some of what he says is rooted in things the builders can see with their own eyes. There really is an enormous amount of rubble. Many of the stones really have been damaged. The Jewish community really is small compared with some of the political powers surrounding it. Sanballat does not have to invent those realities. He simply interprets them in the most discouraging way possible.

That is often how discouragement works. It does not necessarily begin by convincing us of something completely false. Sometimes it begins when we focus upon something that is true while forgetting other truths that matter just as much. We may genuinely be weak in some area. The damage may genuinely be worse than we expected. The work may genuinely take longer than we hoped. Faith does not require us to pretend otherwise. The problem comes when we move from saying, “This is difficult,” to concluding, “Therefore this cannot be done.”

Sanballat looks at the burned stones and concludes that Jerusalem cannot be rebuilt. Nehemiah looks at those same stones knowing that God has already opened the heart of Artaxerxes, provided the resources necessary for the work, brought him safely to Jerusalem, and enabled the rebuilding to begin. The rubble is real, but it is not the only reality.

Nehemiah’s response is instructive. He takes the opposition to God in prayer—“Hear, O our God, for we are despised” (Neh. 4:4)—and then verse 6 tells us simply, “So we built the wall.” He does not allow Sanballat to determine the agenda. There are certainly times when criticism is legitimate and we need to listen; not everyone who disagrees with us is Sanballat. But there are also times when we spend so much energy replaying conversations, defending ourselves, worrying about what others think, and answering every criticism that we stop doing the thing God actually placed in front of us. Sometimes the faithful response is to take the opposition to God and keep building.

Prayer and Responsibility

The wall continues rising and the gaps continue closing. Because ridicule has failed to stop the work, however, the opposition becomes more serious. Beginning in verse 7, Sanballat and the surrounding groups begin plotting together “to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it” (Neh. 4:8). Nehemiah considers the threat credible enough that precautions are necessary, and his response gives us one of the most important statements in the chapter: “And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night” (Neh. 4:9).

There is a remarkable simplicity to the way those two things are held together. They prayed, and they posted a guard. Nehemiah does not assume that because God called them to rebuild Jerusalem, taking reasonable precautions would demonstrate a lack of faith. Neither does he become so consumed with security that prayer becomes unnecessary. They pray because they depend upon God, and they post the guard because God has given them responsibility.

Christians can easily drift toward either extreme. Sometimes we use spiritual language to avoid responsible action. We say that we are trusting God when what we really mean is that we do not want to have a difficult conversation, establish a boundary, ask for help, or make a necessary change. But we can make the opposite mistake as well. We can become so strategic and self-sufficient that we make our plans, establish our safeguards, organize everything we can control, and barely remember to pray. Nehemiah does neither. Dependence upon God and responsible action are not competitors. He prays and posts the guard.

Yet the greatest danger in the chapter does not finally come from Sanballat’s threats. It comes when the discouragement outside the wall begins taking root inside Jerusalem. Verse 10 records the people of Judah saying, “The strength of those who bear the burdens is failing. There is too much rubble. By ourselves we will not be able to rebuild the wall.”

Earlier, Sanballat had essentially said, “You cannot do this.” Now Judah is saying, “We cannot do this.” The voice outside the wall has become the voice inside the builders.

They are tired. The strength of those carrying the burdens is failing. They are overwhelmed by the amount of debris still surrounding them. And because they are tired and overwhelmed, they begin concluding that the wall cannot be rebuilt. What makes their despair so striking is that Nehemiah has already told us that the wall is halfway up. They have accomplished something extraordinary. Sections that had remained broken for generations are standing again, and the breaches are closing. If they look behind them, they can see enormous progress. If they look around them, they can also see enormous piles of rubble.

Both things are true. The wall is half rebuilt, and there is still a lot of rubble.

There is something profoundly recognizable in that picture. We can be making genuine progress while still carrying painful issues that remain unresolved. We can be growing spiritually while becoming increasingly aware of how much still needs to change. We can make real progress against a destructive pattern and still experience temptation. We can begin repairing a damaged relationship and discover that trust takes far longer to rebuild than we hoped. It is possible to say honestly, “God has brought me a long way,” while also saying, “There is still so much work to do.”

Those statements do not contradict one another. Remaining rubble does not mean that God has not been at work. Sometimes we become discouraged precisely because we measure progress only by what remains unfinished.

Remember the Lord

Fear compounds the exhaustion. Reports of a possible attack continue reaching Jerusalem, and the builders are tired enough that the threat begins dominating their thinking. Nehemiah responds by organizing the defenses, but he understands that weapons and guards alone cannot address the deeper problem. In verse 14 he tells the people, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome.”

The command is striking because these people have not forgotten that God exists. Their problem is subtler than that. They have begun interpreting their circumstances as though God is no longer part of them. The enemy has become enormous. The rubble has become enormous. Their exhaustion has become enormous. And God has become functionally small in their field of vision.

Nehemiah does not respond by telling them that the danger is imaginary. He has just armed the people precisely because the danger is real. Biblical faith does not require the denial of reality. Instead, Nehemiah calls them to see their circumstances within a larger reality. They must remember the God who brought them to Jerusalem, who moved the heart of Artaxerxes, who provided what they needed, and who had already enabled a ruined wall to rise to half its height.

This is one of the central disciplines of Christian faithfulness: never evaluate the size of the problem while leaving God out of the equation. The rubble may be real. Exhaustion may be real. The difficulty may be real. But none of those things is the only reality.

Remember the Lord.

Remembering the Lord does not instantly remove Sanballat, eliminate the danger, or finish the wall. What it does is give God’s people what they need to return to faithful action. When the immediate threat is frustrated, Nehemiah writes, “We all returned to the wall, each to his work” (Neh. 4:15).

That may be the quiet victory statement of the entire chapter. Sanballat has not disappeared. The wall is not finished. The danger is not completely gone. But the people have returned to the work. The opposition has failed to separate them from what God gave them to do.

They do, however, work differently from this point forward. Some build while others guard. Those carrying materials remain armed, each builder keeps his sword nearby, and Nehemiah stations a trumpeter so that the people can rally together if an attack comes. The opposition has not stopped the work, but it has taught them to watch.

There are times when faithfulness requires the same kind of adjustment. Something may expose a vulnerability we previously ignored. We may need accountability, wise counsel, stronger boundaries, or help from other believers. We may discover that the way we have been approaching something needs to change. Recognizing vulnerability is not necessarily failure. Wisdom learns from what opposition exposes.

The New Testament does not, of course, call Christians to take up literal weapons against human opponents. Paul reminds believers that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood” (Eph. 6:12), while Peter tells the church to remain sober-minded and watchful (1 Pet. 5:8). The situation is different, but the posture remains instructive. Christians trust God without becoming careless. We pray, prepare, remain watchful, and continue the work entrusted to us.

Keep Building

Nehemiah 4 therefore presses a different question upon us than the question of where we should serve or what responsibility God has placed before us. It asks what happens when we already know where the wall is, already know our section, and have been building long enough to become tired.

What is making us want to walk away from it?

Perhaps it is criticism. Perhaps it is fear or exhaustion. Perhaps we simply thought there would be less rubble by now. We may have been working on something for a long time and find ourselves identifying with Judah’s lament: “The strength of those who bear the burdens is failing. There is too much rubble.”

Nehemiah does not tell exhausted people to pretend. The rubble is real. The exhaustion is real. The danger is real. Instead, he tells them to remember: “Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome.”

Remember the Lord before deciding that the wall cannot be rebuilt. Remember the Lord when your own strength begins to fail. Remember the Lord when the rubble seems larger than the progress. Then return to the work He has placed in front of you.

You are not responsible for the whole wall. But you do have a section. And when building that section becomes harder than you expected, remember the Lord—and keep building.

Image Credit: Antonio Tempesta, The Israelites Rebuilding the Walls of Jerusalem, 1613. Etching. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Public domain.