Tobiah is the representative of the country of Ammon, which today is known as Jordan.
Sanballat is the Governor of Samaria, and that is the area of Palestine which we today call the West Bank. Incidentally when you remember who these enemies of Israel are, you may get a strong sense of déjà vu. These are the powerful weapons the enemy employs here. Thousands of young people are trapped in habits that are destroying them out of fear they will be ridiculed if they try to stop. I know of others who are hooked on drugs, but they do not want to stop because they are afraid they will be laughed at. I know a man who is unable to stop drinking because his drinking friends make fun of him. I know personally of people who are unwilling to do what is right because they fear their friends will laugh at them or mock them. Hear the scorn, derision and sarcasm in those comments! Many of us, perhaps, have experienced this kind of attack. Tobiah the Ammonite, who was at his side, said, "What they are building - if even a fox climbed up on it, he would break down their wall of stones." (Nehemiah 4:1-3 NIV) He ridiculed the Jews, and in the presence of his associates and the army of Samaria, he said, "What are those feeble Jews doing? Will they restore their wall? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they finish in a day? Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble - burned as they are?" When Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, he became angry and was greatly incensed. So Nehemiah discovers, here in the opening verses of Chapter 4. We have been singing about him in Martin Luther's great hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God:Īgainst every effort on our part to get our lives together and recover from damage, hurt, and ruin, we will experience opposition from the enemy.Īlmost invariably his first attempt to halt such recovery is to discourage us through ridicule, derision or rejection. We, like Nehemiah, have an enemy who opposes us with craftiness and power. The opposition takes off its gloves, and the real battle begins. Now, in Chapter 4, Murphy's Law comes into operation. We then noted his first meeting with the enemies who would later oppose him, and, finally, we observed his care in organizing and sharing the labor of this great project as it got under way. He made a careful survey of the walls and the gates to see how much he had to repair. We have observed Nehemiah's honest facing of the magnitude of his task when he got to Jerusalem. This reflects our need to respond to opportunities that may be given to us to recover. Then we have seen Nehemiah's quick response to the opportunity to rebuild when it was given to him. It echoes the concern and the anguish that many of us may feel about areas that have been damaged in our lives by sinful habits, wrong attitudes, or feelings of bitterness or resentment. As we have been following Nehemiah in this great project we first saw his heartfelt concern and anguish over the damaged walls and ruined gates of the capital city of his country. We have seen that this rebuilding and reconstruction pictures for us the steps to recovery from areas of damage or ruin in our own lives. Here, Nehemiah faces severe and violent opposition to his work of rebuilding the walls and gates of Jerusalem. We have come to such a circumstance in Chapter 4 of the book of Nehemiah.
For instance, if you try to fix something, Murphy's Law says it will take longer than you anticipated it will cost more than you expected it will break down before it is paid for and someone will not like it when it is done! Most of us have had experience with what is called "Murphy's Law," the idea that if anything can go wrong, it will.
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