Glorious Things of You Are Spoken

“Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God.”

- Psalm 87:3

By Greg Dirnberger

The Arab “Emirati” have built a spectacular, sparkling city in the desert. Dubai stands as a stunning display of what man’s wealth and workmanship and will can accomplish. Glorious things are spoken about it.

Yet, where did the men who crafted the towering citadels scattered throughout the United Arab Emirates get their oil from which they gained their wealth, by which they purchased their architecture, and engineered their utopian playground? It is in God we live and move and have our being.

So God is the founder of cities. And God loves cities, including the city of Dubai. But God’s heart is mainly on the city He founded and purchased with the price of the blood of His own Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

According to Psalm 87:5, the Most High Himself established her and populated her with those whose names are registered and recorded in the Lamb’s book of life. God brought His beloved Zion out of nothing. And His glorious work in establishing the Church is so praiseworthy that it calls for “singers and dancers alike” (Psalm 87:7a) – a kind of divine “production number” that proclaims, “All my springs, all my life, my joy, my pleasure, my ecstasy is in God!” (Psalm 87:7b)

The city which the Emirati, under God, have established is amazing. But the city of God, the Church, is a display of God’s work, and wisdom, and wealth unsurpassed. What the Spirit of Jesus is building in Dubai, as well as in a nearby closed country, through the dear men we are teaching this week, makes man’s ability to bring a glimmering city into being in a desert about as significant, by comparison, as shaping sand castles in the dirt.

May glorious things be said and sung and praised and danced of the city God has established--His redeemed, those born again by His Spirit in the cities and towns and villages of this region!

This post first appeared at trainingleadersinternational.org/.