“Order my steps in thy word: and let not any iniquity have dominion over me.” – Psalm 119:133
Spurgeon,
Some, I know, fall into a very vicious habit, which habit they excuse themselves, namely, that of ordering their footsteps according to impressions. Every now and then I meet with people whom I think to be rather weak in the head who will journey from place to place, and will perform follies by the gross under the belief that they are doing the Will of God because some silly whim of their diseased brains is imagined to be an Inspiration from above; there are occasionally impressions of the Holy Spirit which guide men where no other guidance could have answered the end..[but]..to live by impressions is oftentimes to live the life of a fool, and even to fall into downright rebellion against the revealed Word of God! Not your impressions, but that which is in this Bible must always guide you! “To the Law and to the Testimony.” If it is not according to this Word, the impression comes not from God—it may proceed from Satan, or from your own distempered brain! Our prayer must be, “Order my steps in Your Word.”
Now, that rule of life, the written Word of God, we ought to study and obey. The text proves that the Psalmist desired to know what was in God’s Word—he would be a reader and a searcher. O Christian, how can you know what God would have you to do if your Bible is unthumbed and covered over with dust? The prayer implies too, that when David once knew God’s Word, he wished to fulfill it all. Some are pickers and choosers. One of God’s Commands they will obey—another they are conveniently blind to—even directly disobedient to it! O that it were not so with God’s people, that they had a balanced mind in their obedience, and would take God’s Word without making exceptions, following the Lamb where ever He goes! “Order my steps, Lord, not in a part of Your Word, but in all of it; let me not omit any known duty, nor plunge into any known sin.” There was in David’s mind, according to this prayer, a real love for Holiness; he was not holy because he felt he ought to be, and yet would gladly be otherwise; if there were anything good and lovely, he desired to have it; if there were anywhere in God’s Garden a rare fruit or flower of purity and excellence, he longed to have it transplanted into his soul, that in all things his life might be the perfect transcript of the Word of God! Stick, then, to God’s Word. There is a perfect rule in the Divine Statutes. May the Holy Spirit cast us in the mold of His Word.
taken from: A Well-Ordered Life, Sermon No. 878, Delivered on Lord’s Day Morning at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington on June 27, 1869.
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