I. It were vain to inquire why human nature requires sympathy; we can only appeal to experience, and we find it to be so. And let the compassionate see in the conduct of their Lord, and in the perfect example of compassion which He sets before us, how they ought always to act in their compassion for a friend. Though full of the deepest feeling, how calm the blessed Jesus stands before the bier of the young man, the only son of a widowed mother. What we require in a friend is not the mere verbal expression of sympathy, or what the cold world, in complimentary language, calls condolence; but with the sympathy we look also for the advice and suggestions of which we are conscious, our minds being paralysed the while with grief, that we stand so greatly in need.
II. Grief is not sin. The sin consists only in the excess of grief; and grief is excessive when it incapacitates us for the duties of our station, or leads us to distrust of our God. This in truth is the struggle of human nature, during the threescore years and ten of its trial to bring the human will into subjection to the Divine. The question is not as to the amount of pain and grief which it may cost us to obey; but whether, notwithstanding the pain and grief, we are ready to submit, and from our trust in God's goodness, through faith to acquiesce with thankfulness in the dispensations of Providence, however painful they may prove to be. When God takes away the friend of our bosom, or the child of our affection, He does not call upon us to rejoice; but He simply requires us to be resigned that is, submissively to yield what God requires of us under the conviction suggested by faith, that it is best that so it should be. There is no sin in praying, "Father, let this cup pass from me," for so prayed our sinless Lord; but there would be sin in failing to say, "Father, not my will but Thine be done," when the will of the Father that the cup should not pass from us, is declared.
W. F. Hook, Sermons on the Miracles,vol. i., p. 174.
References: Luke 7:13. J. Oswald Dykes, Sermons,p. 340. Luke 7:13; Luke 7:14. Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 177. Luke 7:13-15. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. v., p. 32.Luke 7:14. J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes,2nd series, p. 32; R. W. Evans, Parochial Sermons,vol. i., p. 41; J. Thain Davidson, Forewarned Forearmed,p. 275; W. H. Cooper, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 195.Luke 7:14; Luke 7:15. R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons,1st series, p. 278; J. Vaughan, Sermons,14th series, p. 37.