Nehemiah 2:19-20 — They Mocked the Wall, Nehemiah Kept Building

“The God of heaven will give us success. We his servants will start rebuilding.”
— Nehemiah 2:20 (NIV)

What do you do when people laugh at the very thing God told you to build?

The Story Behind the Poster

Nehemiah had not laid a single stone yet. He had only just finished a quiet, nighttime survey of Jerusalem’s broken walls (Nehemiah 2:11–16) and then gathered the people to announce what God had put in his heart: “Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer be in disgrace” (2:17). The people responded, “Let us start rebuilding,” and “they began this good work” (2:18). The assignment had barely begun when the opposition showed up.

“But when Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official and Geshem the Arab heard about it, they mocked and ridiculed us. ‘What is this you are doing?’ they asked. ‘Are you rebelling against the king?’” (Nehemiah 2:19). Three different men, three different tactics, one shared goal: to make Nehemiah doubt his calling, defend his intentions, and abandon the assignment before it ever got off the ground.

Same People, Different Opposition, Still God

Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem reappear throughout the book of Nehemiah, and every time they show up, their strategy has shifted. Here at the beginning it is mockery, doubt, and accusation. Later it becomes conspiracy and threatened violence (4:7–8), then a false invitation to a private meeting where they plan to harm him (6:1–2), then a rumor campaign designed to intimidate him into stopping (6:5–9), and finally a hired false prophet trying to trap him into sin (6:10–13). Same opponents, constantly changing weapons. What never changes is the God Nehemiah answers to.

What They See vs. What God Sees

Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem were not entirely wrong about the facts on the ground — the walls really were rubble. Nehemiah himself had just ridden past the debris and broken gates by night, so overwhelmed by what he saw that his donkey couldn’t even get through in places (2:14). The opposition’s mockery wasn’t built on a lie about the present; it was built on unbelief about the future. They looked at rubble and saw only rubble. Nehemiah looked at the same rubble and saw a finished wall, because he wasn’t counting on Persian permission or public opinion — he was counting on “the God of heaven.” The gap between what critics see and what God sees is rarely a gap in the facts. It’s a gap in whose report you believe.

Authorized by Heaven, Permission Not Required

It is worth noticing what Nehemiah does not do in verse 20. He does not produce his royal letters again. He does not re-argue the case for why the wall matters. He does not ask Sanballat, Tobiah, or Geshem to approve the plan. He simply states where his authority actually comes from — “the God of heaven will give us success” — and then adds a line that ends the negotiation entirely: they have “no share in Jerusalem or any claim or historic right to it” (2:20). The men objecting to the work were never part of the work. Their disapproval was never a vote Nehemiah owed them.

Five Ways to Keep Building When You’re Opposed

This short exchange gives a pattern for every believer who has ever tried to obey God and immediately met resistance.

1. Mocked? Keep building.

Ridicule is loud, but it has no actual power to stop a work God has commissioned. Their words can shake your feelings; they cannot revoke your assignment.

2. Misunderstood? Stay on assignment.

Sanballat and Tobiah questioned what Nehemiah was doing because they were never in the room when God gave him the vision. People who weren’t included in your calling will rarely understand your obedience to it — and their confusion isn’t evidence that you heard God wrong.

3. Accused? Let God defend the call.

Geshem accused Nehemiah of rebellion against the king — a serious, even dangerous charge. Nehemiah didn’t spend his energy proving his loyalty to men. He kept building, and let the finished wall itself become the answer. You don’t have to prove what God has already confirmed.

4. Opposed? Don’t hand critics your tools.

Nehemiah never stopped to negotiate the blueprint with men who had already decided to oppose it. Explaining your calling to someone determined to misread it rarely changes their mind — it only hands them more material to work with. Some conversations are not actually invitations to dialogue; they are attempts to get you to put your trowel down.

5. God commissioned it? Keep moving.

When the God of heaven commissions a work, Sanballat cannot stop it. Tobiah cannot stop it. Opposition, by definition, cannot out-rank the One who gave the assignment in the first place. It can only slow the pace at which you keep moving — if you let it.

Christ Revealed

Nehemiah is mocked for building something God commissioned, and the mockery cannot stop the work — a pattern that finds its fullest expression in Jesus. “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (Psalm 118:22, quoted in Matthew 21:42). Christ was ridiculed at His trial, mocked at the cross itself (Matthew 27:39–44), and declared finished by His enemies — and yet He was building something they could not see: a kingdom, a resurrection, a people. What looked to His accusers like defeat was, in God’s accounting, a finished wall already standing. Every believer who is mocked for obeying God is following the same Builder who was mocked first, and vindicated last.

Prayer

Lord, when the mockery, the doubt, and the accusations come — and they will — remind me that You are still the God of heaven who gives success. Keep me from spending my strength defending myself to people who were never part of the assignment. Teach me to answer as Nehemiah did: briefly, confidently, and then back to work. Let my confidence rest in Your call, not in anyone’s approval. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Faith Declaration

I will not abandon what God told me to build because someone laughed at it. My confidence does not come from people’s approval; it comes from the God who calls. What others see as rubble, God sees as a finished wall. I pick up my tools, I return to my assignment, and I keep building.