This statement is obvious. The Church of Jesus Christ has been laboring for almost two thousand years to extend the kingdom of God in history. Today's Church is the heir of all the efforts, miracles, and legacies that have preceded it. Each generation inherits something from the previous generations. Each generation leaves a legacy to the next. Generation by generation, God's kingdom is extended by His Church.

The basis of this improvement and growth over time is inheritance. Today's generation of Christians is heir to all the accumulated legacies of past generations. There is succession in history -- succession by covenant.

Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations; And repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face. Thou shalt therefore keep the commandments, and the statutes, and the judgments, which I command thee this day, to do them (Deuteronomy 7:9-11)

The Book of Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the five books of Moses, which we call the Pentateuch. It is the book of inheritance. Moses read the law of God to the generation that would inherit the land of Canaan, the fourth generation of the Israelites' sojourn in Egypt, just as God had promised Abraham (Genesis 15:16). Then, under Joshua, the men of the fourth generation were circumcised, after they had come into the Promised Land (Joshua 5:7). On this judicial basis, they inherited the land.

The Pentateuch is structured in terms of the five-point covenant model: transcendence (God the Creator), hierarchy (God the Liberator), ethics (God the Law-Giver), oath (God the Sanctions-Bringer), and succession (God the Deliverer). The Book of Deuteronomy, like the Book of Exodus and the Book of Leviticus, is also structured by this five-point model.

Deuteronomy is the book of Israel's inheritance. Israel's covenantal succession from Abraham to Joshua was confirmed historically by God through the defeat of the Canaanites in the Book of Joshua. But Moses formally passed on this inheritance before he died.

Deuteronomy is Moses' recapitulation of the law. By means of their adherence to God's law, he said, the Israelites could maintain the kingdom grant established by God with Abraham. But they would lose their landed inheritance through disobedience, to be restored only after a period of captivity in a foreign land (Deut. 30:1-5).

Deuteronomy's message is clear: grace precedes law, but God's revealed law is the basis of maintaining the kingdom grant. Transgress this law, and the expansion of God's kingdom in history will suffer a setback for one or more generations. The kingdom inheritance is reduced by God's negative sanctions in history (Deut. 28:15-66). But this inheritance is never permanently lost. It compounds over time. The compounding process -- growth -- is the basis of the triumph of the kingdom in history.