Moses×Jr.

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   From the studio at Reborn Radio — next on TITANS, Moses and Martin Luther King Jr.. They take up On the masterpiece they meant to make but never finished.
2. 00:09
   Mosesshare moment

   I stood on Nebo. The Lord showed me all of it—Gilead to Dan, all Naphtali, Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the western sea. And He said, I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there. That was the unfinished work.
3. 00:36
   Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

   I've been to the mountaintop. That's what I told them in Memphis, the night before. I said I may not get there with you, but we as a people will get to the promised land. And I meant it, Moses. God Almighty, I meant it with everything in me.
4. 00:50
   Mosesshare moment

   Did you know? When you spoke those words, did you know it was the end?
5. 00:56
   Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

   I knew something. There were threats—constant, specific threats. The plane that morning had been delayed because of a bomb scare. But it wasn't knowledge exactly. It was more like... preparation. Like the spirit was getting me ready.
6. 01:11
   Mosesshare moment

   I knew. The Lord told me plainly—because you broke faith with Me, because you did not treat Me as holy, you shall see the land, but you shall not enter. My sin at the waters of Meribah had marked me.
7. 01:29
   Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

   Wait now. You're telling me you were kept out because of one moment? One mistake after forty years in the wilderness?
8. 01:36
   Mosesshare moment

   I struck the rock when I should have spoken to it. I let anger overtake obedience. The people needed water, they were crying out again, always crying out, and I... I lost patience with them. With Him.
9. 01:56
   Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

   Brother Moses, forty years. Forty years you led a complaining, stubborn people through a desert. And one moment of human frustration costs you everything? That doesn't sound like justice. That sounds like the same punitive theology that's been used to keep people in chains.
10. 02:12
    Mosesshare moment

    You mistake me. It was not punishment. It was consequence. When you stand between God and the people, you must be transparent as water. That day, I made it about my power, my exasperation. They saw me, not Him.
11. 02:34
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    I hear you. I do. But help me understand—what about the masterpiece? You brought them out of Egypt. You gave them the Law. You shaped them into a people. Isn't that the work? Doesn't that matter more than crossing one river?
12. 02:48
    Mosesshare moment

    The masterpiece was never meant to be mine. It was always His. I was the instrument, and when an instrument claims the music for itself, it must be set down.
13. 03:02
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    That's a hard word. A true word, maybe, but hard. Because I'll tell you, I wanted to finish. I wanted to see Birmingham really free. I wanted to march into Washington again in 1975 or 1980 and say, look, we did it. We actually built the beloved community.
14. 03:18
    Mosesshare moment

    What do you think you left unfinished?
15. 03:20
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Economic justice. We were just getting started on that. The Poor People's Campaign was supposed to bring everybody together—black, white, brown, Appalachian poor. We were going to build tents on the National Mall and stay there until America dealt with poverty like it was a moral emergency. That was the next mountain.
16. 03:40
    Mosesshare moment

    And you believe you could have climbed it?
17. 03:43
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    I don't know. Honestly, Moses, I don't know. The civil rights coalition was already fracturing. Young people were losing patience with nonviolence. The Vietnam War had turned half the country against me. Maybe I was foolish to think one more campaign could turn it all around.
18. 03:59
    Mosesshare moment

    Perhaps the work was never meant to be completed by one man. Perhaps that is the mercy hidden in the mountaintop.
19. 04:09
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Say more.
20. 04:10
    Mosesshare moment

    If I had entered Canaan, if I had conquered and divided the land, then the people would have said: Moses did this. Moses gave us our inheritance. But I died, and Joshua led them across. Then Caleb and the judges and the kings. The work required generations. No one man could bear its weight.
21. 04:39
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    So you're saying the unfinished work is a gift? Because it forces the next generation to pick up the tools?
22. 04:44
    Mosesshare moment

    I am saying that God does not need us to complete His purposes. He invites us to participate. There is a difference.
23. 04:55
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    But we ache for completion, Moses. We want to see the fruit. I wanted to know that those babies in Birmingham, those children who faced the fire hoses, that they would grow up in a country that valued them. That's not pride. That's love.
24. 05:08
    Mosesshare moment

    It is love. And love makes the mountaintop bearable. I looked out over that land and I grieved, yes, but I also... I saw what it could be. The vineyards, the cities, the children playing in safety. I saw it complete in the mind of God.
25. 05:32
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    And you could rest in that? Knowing you'd never walk those streets?
26. 05:35
    Mosesshare moment

    I had no choice but to rest in it. But yes. The vision was enough. It had to be enough.
27. 05:43
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    I don't know if it's enough for me. I'll be honest with you, brother. I worry that the dream got deferred. That we won some battles and then the country just... moved on. Decided it had done enough.
28. 05:55
    Mosesshare moment

    Tell me about Memphis. Your last night. What were you trying to build there?
29. 06:01
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Dignity for sanitation workers. Black men who carried the city's garbage for poverty wages, no safety equipment, no respect. Two of them had been crushed to death in a trash compactor. We were demanding recognition of their union. Basic human dignity. It seems so small now, but it wasn't small.
30. 06:21
    Mosesshare moment

    No work for justice is small. Every brick matters in the structure, even if you cannot see the roof.
31. 06:29
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    That's what I told myself. But Moses, I'll confess something. There were moments when I wondered if I'd spent too much time on the big speeches, the national stage. Maybe I should've stayed in Montgomery. Built something sustainable in one city instead of trying to save the whole nation.
32. 06:45
    Mosesshare moment

    I spent forty years in Midian tending sheep before the burning bush. Sometimes I wonder if those were wasted years. But they were not. They taught me to wait. To listen. To lead by following.
33. 07:02
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    You think our unfinished work was necessary? Like, theologically necessary?
34. 07:07
    Mosesshare moment

    I think... I think God reserves the completion for Himself. We plant, another waters, but only He brings the harvest. If we could finish it, we would take His glory. And the people would worship us instead of Him.
35. 07:27
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    That's the temptation, isn't it? Even in the movement, people started treating me like I was more than a man. Brother Malcolm called me out on it once. Said I was the system's favorite Negro. That hurt, but he wasn't all wrong.
36. 07:40
    Mosesshare moment

    Did you believe them? The ones who elevated you?
37. 07:44
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Some days. God forgive me, some days I did. I'd walk into a church and thousands would rise, and I'd feel that power. Then I'd go back to my hotel room and get down on my knees because I knew. I knew that power could destroy me if I let it.
38. 08:00
    Mosesshare moment

    Then you understand Nebo better than you think. The mountaintop is not only about what you cannot reach. It is about what you must surrender.
39. 08:13
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    What did you surrender up there?
40. 08:15
    Mosesshare moment

    The belief that I was indispensable. That Israel could not survive without me. That was the final liberation—not from Egypt, but from my own sense of necessity.
41. 08:30
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Lord have mercy. That's the word. Because I spent years thinking the movement needed me. That if I didn't hold it together, it would fly apart. And maybe that was the very thing keeping it from becoming what it needed to be.
42. 08:42
    Mosesshare moment

    Joshua was ready. I did not know it, but he was ready. Who was your Joshua?
43. 08:50
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    That's the question, isn't it? Maybe it wasn't one person. Maybe it was all of them—John Lewis, Diane Nash, Fannie Lou Hamer, the young people in SNCC. Maybe I wasn't supposed to pass it to one heir. Maybe the work was always meant to scatter like seeds.
44. 09:08
    Mosesshare moment

    Then you did finish something after all. You prepared the ground. You showed them it could be done. The rest is planting season.
45. 09:20
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    You give me too much credit, Moses. But I'll take the comfort. I'll take the idea that maybe the mountaintop was the masterpiece. Not what came after, but the seeing itself.
46. 09:30
    Mosesshare moment

    Vision is the beginning of all deliverance. First you must see where you are going. Then you can teach others to see it. Then they walk toward it without you.
47. 09:44
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    I'm learning to believe that. That April evening in Memphis, I really did see it. I saw past the fear and the threats and the divisions. I saw a nation that could be whole. And maybe that was my Nebo.
48. 09:56
    Mosesshare moment

    And maybe that is why we are both here, still speaking. Because the unfinished work calls for more witnesses. More voices from the mountain. The promised land does not have borders. Every generation must cross its own Jordan.
49. 10:17
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Then let them cross it singing, Moses. Let them go over with their heads up and their hearts full. Tell them it's hard but it's possible. Tell them somebody's already been to the mountaintop and seen what's waiting on the other side.
50. 10:31
    Mosesshare moment

    Yes. And tell them the masterpiece is not one man's work. It is the work of the ages, and they are part of it. Even when they cannot see the whole, they are weaving the tapestry.
51. 10:46
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Amen to that, brother. Amen to that.