2 Samuel 5:4 – David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years.

2 Samuel 5:5 – In Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months: and in Jerusalem he reigned thirty and three years over all Israel and Judah.

2 Samuel 5:6 – And the king and his men went to Jerusalem unto the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land: which spake unto David, saying, Except thou take away the blind and the lame, thou shalt not come in hither: thinking, David cannot come in hither.

2 Samuel 5:7 – Nevertheless David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city of David.

2 Samuel 5:8 – And David said on that day, Whosoever getteth up to the gutter, and smiteth the Jebusites, and the lame and the blind, that are hated of David’s soul, he shall be chief and captain. Wherefore they said, The blind and the lame shall not come into the house.

2 Samuel 5:9 – So David dwelt in the fort, and called it the city of David. And David built round about from Millo and inward.

2 Samuel 5:10 – And David went on, and grew great, and the LORD God of hosts was with him.

Hello readers, thanks for reading my blog. I hope this is a blessing to you. This year, one of the best things I’ve gotten out of the Bible comes from this part of scripture. It deals with when David became king of all Israel.

I realized that the very first thing David when he became king was that he went and took Jerusalem. I hadn’t realized that all this time Israel had been in the promised land, they still did not have Jerusalem! Wow, Jerusalem, such an important city in Israel, the very center of worship and the heartbeat of the nation… yet they did not have it!

I realized in this story that the first thing God wants is our heart. The Bible says in Proverbs 23:26 “My son, give me thine heart”. The most important place in our life is our heart, and that’s where God wants to dwell. But often there is a problem… someone else has it and controls it. In this case, Jerusalem was under Jebusite control.

For so many of us, all our problems with sin and so on, they all come from a heart problem. Israel had so much trouble in the land because right in the heart of their nation, Jebusites owned the most important real estate. What kind of a possessing of the land is one that does not take the most important strategic location?

Your heart is God’s most important real estate, it’s where he wants to dwell and reign from, just as David knew that he needed Jerusalem to rule and reign from successfully as king. Your heart is such a vital battle for who will sit on its throne, because the heart has the sphere of influence on your whole life. David would sit on his throne at Jerusalem, that was where he would rule and reign from. Jerusalem became known as the city of David. It’s his city, it bears his name, and he is the king. Can the same be said of your heart and Jesus Christ?

This was a key victory for David, a necessary victory, and Jerusalem was a “must have” place for him. Your heart is a must have for God. There was no compromise with the Jebusites if you read the chapter.  This was not up for negotiation, this was a case of I am taking this place, this is a vital location in Israel. Hopefully we may finally recognize just how vital our heart is, because out of the heart are all the issues of life.

It is crazy to think that for all the time Israel had been in the promised land, they did not have the heart of their land in their possession. Maybe that explains a fair bit about why they were such  a rabble. How can your life be completely victorious without the most important place belonging to God? You can get a lot of things right in your Christian life, but if your heart is a Jebusite stronghold, if it belongs to someone and something other than the most High… you are bound for defeat.

In this scripture, we read that Jerusalem was a Jebusite stronghold. The Jebusites weren’t just there, they were entrenched and fortified in there.  They were so entrenched in there Israel just accepted that Jerusalem was a place we don’t own. That part belongs to someone else. Although God had given them all the land.

David realized that he could not truly and successfully rule and reign as king if the very center and heart of the nation was under someone else’s ownership and control. How could he rule and reign when the Jebusites occupy the most significant and influential and strategic piece of real estate in the land? It would be an incomplete kingdom wouldn’t it, to rule the country yet not rule the center of worship.

God will not truly have rule and reign in your life if your heart, the most important part of you, belongs to Satan and this world. You can do all the external and peripheral things, you can live Christian, speak Christian, look Christian… and yet your heart be the stronghold of the enemy of God. That will result in failure, much like Israel had continuous failure for all those years, though they were in the land.

David was seeking a dwelling place from which he would be king. And that place was Jerusalem. Your place for God is your heart. But so often our heart is a stronghold that is keeping the King out from where he must dwell and needs to dwell in our lives to rule and reign and exert his power and authority.

The Jebusites were so confident in their city and the status quo of them being in control that they put the blind and lame on their walls. They thought “David cannot come in hither”. I mean, this is just so loaded with truth you could sit on that statement for ages, and in our lives and our society it seems like “David cannot come in”. It looks like this place, this topic, this life… it cannot be taken for  Christ. There looks to be no way that person will be saved, there looks to be no way that deliverance can be had, there looks like no way that stronghold can be taken.

But there is no “cannot” with God. Jesus said, with God all things are possible. It is possible for God to have victory in your life. Sometimes the most impossible strongholds are taken with surprising ease, half the battle is getting people to stop accepting the status quo. Really, not much was keeping Israel from taking Jerusalem in the end! Often the toughest barriers are our blindness and the lameness of our feet.

Just like David taking his men straight to Jerusalem when he became king, the first order of business between God and you is your heart. When you get saved, he must have your heart. How can you be saved and lived saved and yet have a heart that is under ownership of someone else, that belongs to someone else that it doesn’t belong to? Jerusalem didn’t belong to the Jebusites, but they had it. How much of your life does Satan have that he has no right to?

God wants a dwelling place, just like David wanted a dwelling place, and God wants your heart. That is where he will dwell. That is his city. He will put his temple there. And he’s not settling for anything less. The king needs to come in, does he need to come in to your heart? Be sure that the first thing that will happen in your life when you repent of your sins and trust in Jesus Christ is that he will sit on the throne of your heart. He must be seated there, he cannot be king without setting up rule and reign in the most important location of your life.

Notice, when David took it, he then built around it and inward… and guess what that is an amazing picture of. When God dwells in your heart, your life starts getting built from inside. God will put up walls deep inside you and he will build you from inside out. David’s rule from Jerusalem would influence the whole nation, and getting our heart into the right condition, which means getting out what does not belong in, is paramount to our Christian walk.

Christianity involves building, being built up in the faith. David fortified his position in Jerusalem, and for the believer, there is building going on inside. Truths are getting settled, and God’s rule and reign and claim to your heart is being strengthened. As you grow as a Christian God is building faith, hope, love, mercy, wisdom, knowledge and many other virtues in you. And notice that David waxed stronger and stronger… all because he had the most important place in Israel, a place nobody had managed to conquer before that.

God wants your heart people, that is the most important battle in your life. It is non negotiable real estate for God for the born again child of God. Jesus is not dwelling anywhere else, he is putting his name and his presence in your heart. That’s where he dwells. Jerusalem went from a Jebusite stronghold to the city of David. Would people say that about you? Have they seen your character and your life go from under Jebusite control to God dwells there? That guy has God in him!

I love the part where the Bible says “nevertheless David took”. Hey, we’ve had this for hundreds of years, you can’t beat us and blah blah… nevertheless David took the stronghold of Zion. We have a king who is ABLE. God is powerful. He knows how to win the battle. He knows the battle that matters. And the battle that matters is for your heart. Everything else will be losing until your heart belongs to God and God rules and reigns from your heart.

May God bless this wonderful truth from his word to your heart today and know that the solution to your problem is the king coming in. David waxed great, and your life will be great when the rightful king sits on the throne of your heart. God was with David, God will be with you.

You know, David went to Jerusalem, and many hundreds of years later, you read about the King of the Jews entering on a colt… the king came in that day, but Jerusalem was  a religious cesspool. What is the state of your heart? When the king comes in what does he find? You know, it was in Jerusalem where Jesus would be betrayed, falsely accused and then led out to be crucified. Our heart is about as ugly as Jerusalem was back then when they crucified our Lord. May we look at our heart and get really honest about who is really dwelling there and who our heart really belongs to today.

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