How doe God discipline? Dueteronomy 7-9

Deuteronomy 8:3-5
" He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. Thus you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son."

In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses is recounting for the new generation the history and path that brought them to the edge of the promise land.   The generation before him was not the generation he brought out of Egypt.   Because of their rebellious nature, God had disciplined that generation and now their children, standing before Moses, needed to hear about that rebellion, the cost of rebellion and about the God behind it.  This book is a story about the character of God and the nature of man.    Int the above passage, Moses outlines for them that this discipline from God, for their parent's unfaithfulness, was at the hand of God, but also done in the mercy of God.  Note in the above passage, that despite the fact that their parents were being disciplined, God was still being gracious to them.   He both feed them and clothed them for forty years while the wandered in a desert less the size of most states.  He sent the manna from heave and made sure the earth was kind to their feet.   Imagine going forty years with the same shoes.   Most women today wouldn't wear the same shoes to work or out of the house for four days, much less the same sandals, in the desert for forty years.   Yet, God made sure their sandals and clothes stayed fresh all that time.    Their feet didn't swell from walking for forty years ... forty!!   God, even in His discipline of us, is gracious and merciful.   We ought not to take His discipline as harmful or destructive to us.   He states in the above passage that His discipline is like that of a man who disciplines his son.   Hebrews echoes that statement in Hebrews 12:6-7.    God is not about hurting us.  He is about correcting our behavior in mercy and grace.   Moses wanted this generation to know that truth.  The truth that God WILL correct unrighteous behavior and do so in mercy and grace.  In this case He corrected them by not taking them right from Egypt into the promise land and performed miracles to feed them and keep them clothed and healthy.  That delay, also, brought grace and mercy to those nations that He was bringing the nation of Israel into the land to destroy.  They were able to live an addition forty years, see the glory of God demonstrated in the lives of Israel and yet, still, continued to no repent.   God's discipline of His children in a merciful and gracious way brought mercy and grace to those who were not His children, as well.   God is good!!!