Psalms 37:23

The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and He deligteth in his way.

The ordered steps

That first step of your little child--what an event it is! Never again will single steps have such interest for you. And yet why not? In manhood, no less than in infancy, single steps are significant. You find it out sometimes in disagreeable ways. One step in the dark carries you off firm footing into an open trap, or down a bank. The first step down a wrong road is the beginning of troublesome, and possibly dangerous, wanderings. The first step to honour or fortune-how much meaning!

I. God orders and establishes the details of his children’s lives. Details are of immense importance everywhere. Step by step is the law of all progress. God moves masses through details. A man is what the details of his life are. In the Bible we see God busied not alone with great things, but He is constantly dealing with details. He is explaining a servant’s dream; He is providing for a little castaway babe in a bulrush basket. And so it was in the life of Christ. His work was full of detail, of small incidents of little duties daily done. The same thing appears in Christ’s preaching. He tells men how to live; but He says nothing about great, far-reaching plans of life. His talk is rather of living by the day, and letting the morrow take thought for the things of itself. He comes to reveal God to us: but His speech is not about the God of vast designs and transcendent power; rather of one who paints each lily of the fields, and feeds the birds, and marks the sparrow’s fall, and numbers the hairs of our head. Thus you see one law--the law of the steps--running through physical and moral nature alike. Gravitation and Providence observe the same principle. God regulates the mass through the particles; society, through the individual; the individual, through the details of his life.

II. And there is design and plan in all though we often fail to perceive this. Our little daily duties appear to have so slight relation to each other. But as one illustration that the truth is other than it seems, look at the familiar history of the life of Joseph. The steps of a good man, then, are ordered. He does not walk at random. And really you and I, in our measure, are familiar with the same fact, and act it out. You see in a son of yours promise of intellectual and moral power; and you set yourself to shape that boy’s career, and you do shape it, and that by attending to its successive steps. Is there, then, anything strange in our heavenly Father’s ordering the steps of His children? For a free will may choose to obey another will. If God has prepared tracks for my life, surely my very freedom of choice empowers me to keep to those tracks: and, to the obedient, loving soul, it is an immense comfort and relief to know that his life moves on prepared lines. I sat one evening in a window looking out on Charing Cross railway-station, with its trains arriving, and departing every few minutes, and its cross-tides of thronging people. A train stood on the track, and the bell rang for starting. In front, through the great archways, I looked out into the misty night. A few stray gleams of light revealed a labyrinth of rails, curving and crossing: above was a signal-stand--a great hieroglyph of green, red, and white lights, shifting every moment; and into this darkness and confusion the engine moved. What was it that made that engineer so quiet and confident? Why was he not disturbed and anxious at the chaos of rails and lights and the thick night beyond? Simply because everything was laid down for him. He had only to obey the signals, and drive his engine: the track was laid. Other minds had the care and responsibility of the switches and signal-lights: he had only to go forward, and to stop when bidden. “I do not like the picture,” some one will perhaps say. “It leaves me little to say about my life.” Well, change the picture if you will. Let the engineer go forth from the station on an engine not fitted to a track. Let him move out into the night, in the consciousness of independence and free choice, to avoid collision and wreck as he can. Have you bettered the matter any? Our own way means ruin; God’s way is, and alone is, salvation.

III. God is pleased with him who lets his steps be ordered. Literally the words read, “From Jehovah is it that a man’s steps are established, so that He hath pleasure in his way. We do God a great wrong when we picture Him as a creditor whose interest in his debtors begins and ends with their paying their debts. God merges the relation of debtor and creditor in that of father and child. It is a very small part of your interest in your child, that he should repay you for your care of him. In fact, payment is impossible. On the contrary, everything the child does or says is interesting to you because he is your child. Now, possibly, we find it hard to transfer just that feeling to God; and yet that is the true view of his feeling towards His children. But we find it difficult to believe, though we would like to, that we are God’s children. We are so faulty and wrong: it seems a cruel satire to tell me that the Lord delighteth in my way. Here, then, the third truth of the text comes in.

IV. Infirmity is recognized as an element of the good man’s walk. “Though he fall”--then it is looked upon as more than possible that he may fall. We may go back to the picture of the babe’s first walk. There is none which better suits the case. You do not despise that baby’s attempts at walking, because he falls over now and then. You would rather have him fall a hundred times--yes, and hurt himself too--than not have him walk at all. Let us face the fact squarely. There is falling along the path by which God orders a man’s steps. It is not that God ordains sin. He does not. But the path which God ordains for a good man lies through this world: and sin is in the world, no matter why or how; and a good man’s walk with God consists very largely in a fight with sin. What God pledges is not that he shall walk to heaved a perfect, sinless man all the way. The psalmist prays, “Order my steps in Thy Word: and let not any iniquity have dominion over me”; and, when we turn from the psalmist to Paul, we find the answer to that prayer: “Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace.” The promise is for victory in the fight, but not for escape from the fight. Establishment does not exclude conflict or fall. One has said of David after his moral fall, “He is not what he was before, but he is far nobler and greater than many a just man who never fell and never repented. Let us beware of thinking repentance a sentiment of a lower grade, or degrading to the man who drops its bitter tears. There is something heroic in the man who looks up to God’s ideal of manhood far, far above him, and at himself, lamed and wounded by his fall, and says, “By God’s grace I will mount to it.” Learn then--

1. If God has ordained a way for men to walk in, it is the height of folly to walk in any other way.

2. If God, as we have seen, orders our ways step by step, it becomes us to take heed to the details of our lives.

3. And ought we not to get great comfort out of this Divine ordering of each step? When a traveller in the Alps is ascending an ice-slope where he has to cut steps as he mounts, he thinks of little besides the step he is at that moment cutting. He has a point to reach, a space to traverse; but all that is lost sight of in the danger and difficulty which wait on every step he knows he will escape destruction only as each step shall be rightly cut, and his foot firmly planted each time. It is a good deal so in this life. It is not a safe journey by any means; but there is this assurance for a child of God who walks it, that each step shall be sure if he only commits his way unto the Lord. The separate steps! Sometimes each one seems to sink into a quagmire, or to strike a stone. It is hard to walk on in strong faith that they are ordered by the Lord. But they are so. Remember this, and that if He be for me, who can be against me? (Marvin R. Vincent, D. D.)

The Lord’s ordering of a good man’s steps

I. The life of a good man is divinely planned.

1. If you will examine this psalm, you will have no difficulty in ascertaining what the writer means by a good man. “He trusts in the Lord and does good; he delights himself also in the Lord; commits his way unto the Lord; trusts also in Him; rests in the Lord; and waits patiently for Him.”

2. “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.” Many persons never think of this; some deny it altogether; and perhaps most of us often forget it, and thus lose the comfort of it (Proverbs 16:9; Proverbs 20:24).

(1) This plan is individual. There is not an item in our daily life which is not comprehended. Our joys, our sorrows, our associates, our connections, our wanderings, our acts, our thoughts; my life, your life, is Divinely ordered.

(2) It is special as it is comprehensive, The good man is Divinely directed in his everyday procedure, in his going out and coming in, his lying down and rising up, his successes and failures, his joys and sorrows, his trials and triumphs, his birth and death.

(3) It is benevolent. God overrules all agents and all events for the well-being of His people. God’s plan is great in its conception, great in the Divine skill by which it is shaped and worked out; above all, great in the momentous issues it prepares. But remember it is good as it is great. What a thought is this for us to cherish! What instigations does it add to send us onward in everything that constitutes our excellence!

II. The life of a good man is divinely approved. “He delighteth in his way.” This is understood by some to mean that the good man delights in the way of the Lord. I think the words mean that the Lord delights in the way of the good man. The good man delights himself in the Lord, and the Lord delights in him.

1. He delighteth in his way, because it is formed and fashioned according to the will of God, and is directed by His own Spirit.

2. He delighteth in his way, because it manifests His glory. “The heavens declare the glory of God.” But more of God and His glory may be seen in the life of a good mail than can be seen in the material universe. You see in him all that can be seen in the material creation, but you see in him what cannot be soon in it; and, moreover, you see more clearly what can.

III. The life of a good man is divinely protected.

1. The possibility implied. “Though he fall.” A good man, in this world of changes and reverse, may get prostrated by misfortune and distress; he may sink very low as to worldly circumstances; he may, like Job, be stripped of everything, or, like Joseph, put in prison. In this life disasters are to be expected, and it forms no part of God’s plan to prevent them. They are intended for the benefit of the good man; they are the refiner’s fire.

2. The truth expressed. “He shall not be utterly cast down.” He may fall; he may be cast down; but he shall not be prostrated wholly, not be thrown down for ever. The good man must expect to suffer, but not perish (verses 9, 10, 13, 15, 17, 20).

3. The reason. “The Lord upholdeth his hand,” or, “is holding him up by his hand,” or, “upholdeth him with His hand.” “Thou hast holden me by my right hand.” God not only sustains the good man in particular emergencies, but He is his constant and habitual upholder (verses 12, 18, 21). He has always a hold on his hand. He never lets it go. (P. Griffiths.)

Human evolution: from the involution of the Divine Spirit

A man’s way is strictly the original Divine-human life more and more rooting and opening itself in him: the glory of God shed abroad in the inner world of his soul, as the solar glory is shed abroad in the earth, developing, transfiguring, and preparing him for his ascension, “God delighteth in the way;” because it is love’s way, and unspeakably delightful. It is life’s way to man’s completeness and complete blessedness; and grander than any man can think or imagine. It is evolution and evolution, not from non-intelligent matter, but from the living incorruptible substance in which God is involved as the working power. The steps which the Infinite Father has ordered for His sons and daughters are a series of surprises. Love delights to surpass expectation, and to have greater and greater surprises in reserve.

1. The whole round of nature is a ceaseless wonder, and ceaselessly changing its aspect. It feasts our affections, gratifies our love of the beautiful, exhilarates and enlarges the mind, cultivates the imagination, and is an endless source of poetic symbolism and illustration. It lives and breathes; and therefore demonstrates the nearness of God. It is never old, for it renews itself, and grows before our eyes. There ere always untrodden districts, and unvisited worlds awaiting our opportunity. Then God’s sons and daughters are themselves all that nature is, and much more. They are the crown of nature: they are nature, plus divinity.

2. Another beautiful surprise comes within the scope of our earthly existence: the home and family-surprise. New spirits from God actually arrive: they come secretly into our very blood, and clothe themselves with our nature; they come to stay with us and grow up in our homes. Their vivacity and novelty add a wonderful charm and enlargement to our life.

3. The stealing on of nature’s great eclipse and midnight is the dawn of God’s new life--full morning for the inner man. Death is new birth; when the sweetest surprise of all breaks into view. Nature’s children die; but God’s never. His children live, and breathe, and hold their being in the bosom of His Almighty Livingness. The way of God is from the first a “living way.” “Thou wilt show me the path of life;” and His path of life becomes more and more living; and most living, in, and through nature’s death. “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” The ascent from the cold gloom of the valley is swift, for the guardian angels meet us there, and God is in them. (John Pulsford, D. D.)

Special providence

God exercises a special control over His chosen people.

I. God has a special design in their preservation and government.

1. He has a plan for the life of each one (Isaiah 30:21).

2. He knows the temperament peculiar to each one (Psalms 139:3).

3. He suits His providence to the temperament of each one so as to accomplish His design (Matthew 12:20; Ephesians 1:5).

II. God employs means to work out his designs. Sin is to be mortified and expelled, whilst character is to be refined and perfected. For this purpose trials and temptations, persecutions and afflictions, calamities and bereavements, are apportioned to each.

1. These are permissive (Job 1:12).

2. They are decretive (Genesis 22:2; 1 Peter 1:3).

3. They are afflictive and corrective (Psalms 119:67; Psalms 119:71; Jeremiah 31:18; Hebrews 12:6).

III. The nature of these providences.

1. They are minute and exact (Matthew 10:30).

2. They relate to food and raiment (Psalms 37:25; Matthew 6:25).

3. They extend to the whole of life (Job 14:5; Psalms 37:23; Psalms 139:14).

IV. Application.

1. Let us trust God more implicitly in all the events of life.

2. Let us take comfort from this doctrine. “All things work together for good” (Romans 8:28); they do so now. Whatever else may fail us, God will not (Psalms 97:1). (L. O. Thompson.)