Psalms 119:133

Order my steps in Thy Word: and let not any iniquity have dominion over me.

Ordered steps

I. Complete subservience to the will of God.

1. “Order.” He is a man who wishes to be under orders, he is willing to obey the Lord’s commands, and he is anxious to receive them, and to be made to carry them out.

2. “Order my steps in Thy Word.” Once we lived without any order, or plan, or method; but the grace of God makes us methodists in the highest possible sense. It makes us live according to God’s method; and our prayer is, that we may never be disorderly, but that in all things, just as the universe is arranged by God, and all the stars keep their appointed courses, so we may be made to take our proper places, and may be kept in them, joyfully obedient to the will of the Most High.

3. “In Thy Word.” He was perfectly satisfied with God’s revelation; he had not so much of it as we have, but there was room enough in it for all his steps. He wanted no greater liberty than the Bible gave him.

II. Careful watchfulness.

1. He does not say merely, “Order my life,” but, “Order my steps.” Godly men desire to be kept right by God even in the little things of life.

2. That prayer means, “Order my ordinary dally life.” Do not many think that religion is only something for Sundays?

3. Let us especially pray about all our advances. It is by steps that we go forward.

III. Comprehensive obedience. It has two clauses, the positive and the negative. “Order my steps in Thy Word;” that is, “Lord, make me positively to do the right thing!” Then, “let not any iniquity have dominion over me”; that is, “Lord, preserve me from any thought, or word, or deed which would be contrary to Thy mind and will!” He is the right sort of believer who is an all-round Christian, one who is positive for doing the right, but who is equally determined not to do the wrong.

IV. Cautious apprehensiveness. He means, “Lord, I am afraid to take a single step without Thine orders, I am afraid to put one foot before another for fear I should go wrong!” “Happy is the man that feareth alway.” He that was too bold was never too wise. He that leaped before he looked, looked very sadly after he had leaped. He shall go right who knows where he is going, is careful about the road, and afraid lest he should go astray. He is the man who prays, “Order my steps in Thy Word.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)

A soul conscious of its dependence on God

I. For guidance. “Order my steps.” The human spirit is destined to move on and on for ever. It needs a guide; it cannot guide itself, nor can any finite creature do so.

1. There is but one safe Guide. If He “order” our “steps,” two evils will be avoided.

(1) Moral stumblings. Souls are everywhere stumbling on the path of life, they fall, and often receive fatal injuries, “Hold Thou me up and I shall be safe.” The other evil avoided will be--

(2) Unhappy destination. The path of life, whilst it may have no real end, but run on through ages interminable, has one awful crisis that decides the ultimate fate of the traveller, and that crisis is death.

2. If He order the steps of the soul, the crisis will be the constant brightening and beautifying of the path.

II. For emancipation. “Let not any iniquity have dominion over me.”

1. This is the worst of despotisms.

(1) It is the most criminal. There are despotisms social and political that are calamities, not crimes: the poor victim cannot avoid them. Not so the despotism of sin. A despotism which, in the first place, he never ought to have allowed; but having allowed, he should break away from and become heroic and free.

(2) It is the most powerful. A man might become such a victim of worldly despotism as to be imprisoned in a dungeon and cut off from all fellowship with living men. Still his soul may be free. Paul and Silas. But sin manacles the soul, shuts out its light, and binds its faculties in chains mightier than adamant.

(3) It is the most enduring. Death will put an end to all worldly despotisms; in the grave the slave is free from his tyrant. But death has no power to put an end to this slavery of the soul.

2. This is the most prevalent of despotisms--co-extensive with the world of unregenerate humanity. (Homilist.)

A well-ordered life

This is not the prayer of an unconverted man, or the cry of an awakened sinner thinking to find salvation in good works; it is the prayer of one who is saved, and who knows it. Note each word of the text. “Order.” David looking abroad saw order ruling everywhere; he would have his life in harmony with the universe. “My steps:” he is anxious as to details. He would have each single step ordered in holiness. “In Thy Word.” Not by Thy Word, nor according to Thy Word. The sentence means that, but it means far more. Not by Thy Word, as though it were a law hanging up upon the columns in the market-place; but in, as though it were engraven in my heart and encompassed all my ways. “And let not any iniquity,” etc. This expression is weaker than the first, pitched upon a lower key: as if he would say, “If, O Lord, my steps cannot be so ordered as that I shall be altogether without sin, yet let not any iniquity gain the mastery of my spirit. O, my Lord, suffer no iniquity to sit down on the throne of my heart and make me its serf and vassal.” But now, keeping to the first sentence only, we note--

I. That a holy life is a masterpiece of order. Holiness rejoices in symmetry, proportion, harmony, order. That--

1. Of conformity to rule. We have the rule given us in living characters in the incarnate Word. I fear me there are hundreds of Christians who do not scruple to do things without once pausing to use the plumb-line of Christ’s example to see whether their actions are upright. But the truly Christian heart will ever seek to proceed according to the Divine mind.

2. That which is arithmetical. Things are never in order when the second is before the first, and order in life consists very much in seeking first the kingdom of God. Oh, it is well with the Christian when he has learned his notation table well, and gives the first thing the first place.

3. That which is geometrical. There should be progress in Christian life, and if the advance be by a constant multiple, how greatly will a man increase. He who did a little for Christ when but a babe in grace should do more as a young man, and most of all as a father.

4. The order proportional. All Christians should endeavour so to balance their lives that there shall not be an excess of one virtue and a deficiency in another. Courage some will have till they are rude. Modesty in otters will sink into cowardice. It is only in the life of Jesus that you see this order most of all: it shall perplex you to discover what virtues shine with purest radiance.

5. That of relation. We stand not alone; we are all the centres of circles, and innumerable lines intersect each other in the region of our hearts. Now, we should seek for right relationship with God and with all men and things: with the Church and our own families.

6. There is an order of period: the order of the celestial Almanack: duties done at due time. Holiness consists not in the rushing of intense resolve, which, like Kishen, sweeps everything before it, and then subsides, but in the constant flow of Silvah’s still waters, which perpetually make glad the city of God. The tree that God commendeth bringeth forth its fruit in its season. It is the fault of numbers that their virtues are always too late.

7. The order of suitability. What would be right enough for one man is not so for another. What is suitable to She worldling is not She measure of the Christian’s service. “What do ye more than others?” is a very pertinent question to all of us.

II. The rule of this order. “In Thy Word,” not according to my wishes, which would be mere self-will. Nor according to profit of this world: nor according to the rule of pleasure: nor according to impressions, but “in Thy Word.”

III. The director whom David had chosen. God Himself. Much will depend upon the model that a man takes, and the captain under whom a man serves. A commanding officer, last week at Aldershot, was obeyed by his soldiers with that prompt discipline which is peculiar to the British soldier; but through some mistake he managed to dash together two parties of dragoons, so that one or two were injured and one man killed outright. When God orders us no harm can come then. David’s prayer is for a loving heart, an illumined mind, guidance of the Spirit, to have the love of holiness; to be not tempted above what he is able--this prayer means all these things. Christians, seek holiness would you extend the Church’s power; would you enjoy peace in your own souls. And you whose steps are not ordered in God’s words--some of you are halting. Decide now. Others of you are hypocrites. How will you bear the judgment of God? Trust in Jesus now. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The gate to the drill-ground

I. The psalmist recognizes and accepts his obligation to be subject to moral order. He prays that his daily life, not only in its large outlines, but in its details, its “steps,” may be ordered. We need a rule of life, and we need also to become established in a habit of loyalty to that rule. The prayer, “Order my steps,” is a prayer for habitual subjection to Divine order. A religion which does not regulate a man’s life is no religion at all. It contradicts its own name; for, according to its derivation, religion is something which binds together God and man, and therefore puts the whole of man’s life in contact with God. All spiritual influences, however high they are lodged, gravitate inevitably to men’s ordinary level of life. “As he thinketh in his heart so is he.”

II. The psalmist recognizes the source and centre of all moral order. “God is its centre and God’s Word its manual, and to God he addresses himself in prayer that he may be drawn and kept within the sphere of His heavenly order. The Bible brings to bear upon a man a variety of influences, all tending to the ordering of his steps.

1. It centres him. Whatever the Bible is, it is, first of all, a revelation of God. It keeps God before him continually. All its own movement centres in God, all its sanctions are God’s. There is no detail but is referred to God. There is no escape from God.

2. It regulates him. The statutes of the Lord are right, and are meant, as some one has quaintly said, “to set us to rights.” It does not make itself superfluous. It does not bring man into the sphere of God’s order, and leave him there, but it leads him along in that order, ordering every step until he steps from earth to heaven.

3. It restrains him. There is no order without restraint. Restraint is implied in guidance. Yonder planet which fulfils its appointed course in its orbit, and century by century traverses the same unvarying track, moves, indeed, under a power which propels it from the centre, but it moves also under a power which holds it to the centre. And nothing in the Bible is more striking than this union of impulse and restraint.

4. It establishes him. The Bible brings the element of fixedness more and more into our lives.

III. Having acknowledged the obligation to be under moral order, having recognized the source and centre of that order, having prayed that he might be introduced to that Divine order and kept in it, the psalmist naturally prays to be delivered from the consequence of moral lawlessness: and that consequence is expressed in a word--subjection. In his prayer that iniquity may not have dominion over him, he utters the truth that sin is servitude; the truth which Paul expressed in (Romans 6:16). (M. R. Vincent, D. D.)

Life a series of steps

He who travels over a continent must go inch by inch. He who writes a book must do it sentence by sentence. Life is made up of little things--little courtesies, little kindnesses, pleasant words, genial smiles, a friendly letter, good wishes, and good deeds. One in a million, once in a lifetime, may do an heroic action. But the little things that make up our life come every day and every hour. If we make the little events of life beautiful and good, then is the whole full of beauty and goodness. (Christian Weekly.)

The Bible a chart

The Bible is a chart. It teaches men how to steer where the sandbank of temptation is, where that rock of danger is, where that whirling vortex of passion is. The Bible is a chart of salvation; and if a man only knows his course by this, he will go through life with all its storms and come safely into the port of heaven. (H. W. Beecher.)

Symmetry in Christian character

Some men’s lives are out of perspective. Do you remember Hogarth’s caricature of a picture without perspective, wherein a man appears to be fishing in a river, but is really standing far away from it; a sparrow in a tree looks like a huge eagle, and a man on the top of a hill is borrowing a light from a candle held out of the window of a house down below on the other side of a river. Without perspective good drawing is impossible, and without proportion a complete life is impossible. A man may be, in many points, a good man, and yet he may have so much of one virtue that it may become a vice, and he may have so little of another virtue that it may be a grave defect. We can never attain to the right proportion of the virtues unless the Lord Himself arranges them in order for us. O Lord, help us. Order our steps. (C. H. Spurgeon.)