We see that David and his Kingdom is a powerful allegory of Jesus and how he will build his church. The fortified city of Jerusalem, which God instructed David to build, is also a similar allegory that gives many insights as to how heavenly Jerusalem was built and how it functions.
During the last 30 years of king David’s reign and in the early years of king Solomon’s reign, we can see a true picture of how God wanted the church to be built. Unfortunately, Solomon’s Kingdom fell into apostasy after a few years. This was mainly due to the death of David and the abandonment of David’s Tabernacle, with its pure and passionate worship. In addition, the corrupting influence of Solomon’s Pagan wives soon led him astray-and then many of the leaders and the people into compromise, immorality, and the corrupting worship of other gods.
Cities, not villages
In Biblical times, only strong, fortified cities could exercise rule and government over the whole region and withstand invaders that came against them. A king could not rule land without having control of a network of strong cities that established and upheld his rule.
No one seeking to conquer a land could succeed as long as the cities of that land were not taken and under his command. In terms of rule and government, whoever had control of the cities had control of the land, and whoever lost control of the cities lost control of the land.
The villages were powerless in this matter. They could not of themselves rule over anything, and they automatically suffered the consequences of whatever happened to the cities. From the villages it was possible to carry out some forms of guerrilla warfare and harass the enemy king who ruled from the cities to some extent. But to wrest the rule and government and take control, cities themselves had to be taken.
This is a very important spiritual principle, in spite of the great growth of the church, the enemy has continued to hold such sway in our society and clearly still rules in our cities and over the societies major institutions. We have been building many individual, autonomous local churches, which are like isolated villages. They are not city churches.
In Old Testament times, the villagers relied on the cities for their protection, government, and protection. They lived in the shadow of the cities and paid tribute to them. Every strong city had a large number of villages over which they exercised authority.