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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.)

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KJV: Order my steps in thy word: and let not any iniquity have dominion over me.

WEB: Establish my footsteps in your word. Don't let any iniquity have dominion over me.