And let me just make it plain. Railing has to be false. You say, I want to know what a rail is.
It has to be false. If it's true, it's never railing. Okay. And we're going to see this
being consistent throughout the scriptures. Now, what would be a rebuke? A rebuke is always true.
It can't be false. If I say something against you and it's false, I'm not rebuking you. I'm railing
on you. Go to Mark chapter 15, Mark chapter number 15. And let's look at verse number 29.
The Bible says, and they that pass by railed on him, wagging their heads and saying, oh,
thou that destroys the temple and builds it in three days, save thyself and come down from the
cross. Likewise, also the chief priest mocking said among themselves with the scribes, he saved
others himself. He cannot save. Let Christ the king of Israel descend now from the cross.
They may see and believe. They that were crucified with them, revile them.
So notice what the Bible is saying. It's saying that there's people walking by the Lord Jesus
Christ, hanging on the cross, and they start mocking him and ridiculing him and specifically
railing on him. Now what's the rail? Is it just that they're speaking against him? No.
They're saying that he cannot destroy the temple and raise it up again in three days.
But what does Jesus do? Exactly that. Because of their misunderstanding of the scriptures,
misunderstanding what Jesus was teaching them and telling them about, they end up railing on
him and mocking him for something that he's going to actually do and be successful. Here's another
thing they said. He can't save himself. That's also false because at the moment that Jesus
Christ asked for angels, God will send a legion of them to go help him. God will send a whole host of
angels to save him, deliver him. But you know what? He had the self-control to die on the cross
for our sins. He had the self-control to be obedient unto God's commandments, even when
people are mocking them. Now that's impressive because there's a lot of men who are very strong
physically and some little pipsqueak comes around and start being like, you couldn't take me on.
You couldn't hit me. You couldn't punch my face. You couldn't knock me out in one hit.
And you're just thinking like, yes, I can. It takes a lot of self-restraint to know that for
sure and then still not do it because there's a part of you that just wants to just knock their
teeth out whenever they're talking trash to you. But you know, the Lord Jesus Christ took that
railing. He took that mocking so that he could fulfill his purpose. Go to Luke chapter number 23
and one of the malefactors, thou be the Christ, save thyself and us. So notice what he's doing.
He's putting doubt and shade on the fact that Jesus is the Christ and he's making this railing
accusation by saying, if you truly were the Christ, then what would you do? You would save
yourself and us. So if you don't save us, that's proof that you're what? Not the Christ. But that's
a railing accusation because he is the Christ and he is going to die. But that was his purpose. That
was his mission. So again, another false accusation. They're railing on him by trying to put doubt and
shade. That's what the devil literally said. If thou be the son of God, command these stones,
they'll be made bread. But did Jesus do that? No, he didn't fall for that trap.
But look at the next verse. We had verse 39. Look at verse number 40. But the other answering
rebuked him saying, dost thou not fear God seeing thou art in the same condemnation? So we have two
guys. We have a thief on one side, a thief on the other. Okay. One thief rails on Jesus. Why?
Because he said something false. The next guy, he rebukes the other guy. Now, were they both
saying something negative? Was it both public? Yeah, but what was the difference? One was false,
one was true. He's saying, hey, don't you fear God? So notice how the Bible switched from railing
to rebuke. Why? Based on one word, truth. Truth. Truth is the difference between railing and
rebuking every single time in the Bible.