God’s work would be done better, and with more success, if all His workmen were like Nehemiah.  But, alas! many who call themselves workers for God are ready to run off from the work at every call, every invitation, every appeal from the world, the flesh, or the devil.  I am doing a great work, but there is that amusement I want to take part in, the work must be left to-day.

I am doing a great work; but I do not feel inclined for it just now, I feel idle, or the weather is too cold to go out, or the sun shines so brightly I should like a walk instead, I must leave my work to others to-day.

I am doing a great work; but I love my own ease, or pleasure, or convenience, better than I love the work, these must come first and the work must come second.

So speak the actions of many so-called workers, and thus it is that so much Christian work is a dead failure.

But, says Nehemiah, ’I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down:  why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you?’

Let us remember his words, let us inwardly digest them, and the very next time that we are tempted to give up work for God and to run off to something else, let us take care to echo them.

But Sanballat is determined not to be beaten, he will try again and yet again.  Four times over he sends Nehemiah a friendly invitation to a friendly conference, four times over Nehemiah steadily refuses to come.  Then, when that plot completely fails, Sanballat loses his temper.

One day a messenger arrives at the gate of Jerusalem with an insult in his hand.  The insult is in the form of a piece of parchment; it is a letter from Sanballat, an ‘open letter,’ ver. 5.

Letters in the East are not put into envelopes, but are rolled up like a map, then the ends are flattened and pasted together.  The Persians make up their letters in a roll about six inches long, and then gum a piece of paper round them, and put a seal on the outside.  But in writing to persons of distinction, not only is the letter gummed together, but it is tied up in several places with coloured ribbon, and then enclosed in a bag or purse.  To send a letter to such a man as Nehemiah, not only untied and unenclosed, but actually not even having the ends pasted together, was a tremendous insult, and Nehemiah, who had been accustomed to the strict etiquette of the Persian court, knew this well.

But Sanballat probably sent this open letter not only with the intention of insulting Nehemiah, but also in order that every one whom the messenger came across might read it, and that the Jews in Jerusalem and its neighbourhood might be frightened by its contents, and might therefore be inclined to forward his plans.

The letter contained a piece of gossip.

‘It is reported among the heathen, and Gashmu saith it.’

So the letter began, and then there followed the scandal, the gossip about Nehemiah.