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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.)

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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.