Isaiah 63, 64

1.1 Happy Father's Day, and congratulations to the Class of 2026! As I think back to my own graduation in 1997, it was absolute chaos. Korean graduation ceremonies, especially high school ones, are quite literally a riot. Things might be different now, but for my graduation, we needed a bag of flour and a bottle of yogurt. First, we threw the yogurt. Then we threw the flour. And just like that, we all turned into snow men, like this photo.

1.2 When my father saw the state I was in, he just laughed and told me, "That's tradition!" He said his own generation's graduation had been even worse than mine. Afterward, my family tried to go to a restaurant to celebrate, and they turned us away because of how we looked.

1.3 Every graduation season, and every Father's Day, this memory comes back to me — not just because it was hilarious, though it was, but because that was the first time my father ever told me a story from his own life. He let me see him as someone who had once stood exactly where I was standing.

1.4 So I want to ask you a question this morning:

• What is your image of a father? And what do you remember about your own graduation?

• What does it actually mean to be a father? And what does it mean to graduate — to step into what's next?

That's our theme today. Let's read together from Isaiah 63:15–16 and 64:8–12. 

Isaiah 63:15–16 ESV

Look down from heaven and see, from your holy and beautiful habitation. Where are your zeal and your might? The stirring of your inner parts and your compassion are held back from me. For you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us, and Israel does not acknowledge us; you, O Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name.

Isaiah 64:8–12 ESV

But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Be not so terribly angry, O Lord, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people. Your holy cities have become a wilderness;

Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and beautiful house, where our fathers praised you, has been burned by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins. Will you restrain yourself at these things, O Lord? Will you keep silent, and afflict us so terribly?

An Ontological Crisis

2.1 Now let's go back to around 587 BC to look at the historical background. Picture the scene. Jerusalem is in ruins — and not metaphorically, but literally. The temple, the most beautiful building these people had ever known, the place where heaven and earth were supposed to meet, is ash. The Davidic throne, the line of kings going back to David himself, is finished. The nation's elite have been dragged off to Babylon.

2.2 And here's what I want you to notice: this isn't just a political disaster. It isn't just "things got hard." This is something deeper — this is what we'd call an ontological crisis, a crisis of being itself. Every single thing that used to answer the question "Who are we?" has collapsed.

2.3 Think about it this way. If we grew up in a nation — for me, that's Korea — our identity used to be anchored in things like which family we came from, which ancestors we could trace our name back to, which institution we belonged to. For Israel, it was the same kind of thing, just on a national scale: they are the children of Abraham. They are the descendants of Jacob. That's who they are.

2.4 But now, Abraham and Jacob are dead. And worse than dead — the text is about to tell us that even if they were alive, they wouldn't recognize their own descendants. The very ancestry that used to guarantee identity has gone silent. This is what makes verses 15 and 16 so explosive. Listen to where this prayer goes:

Isaiah 63:15–16 NLT

Lord, look down from heaven; look from your holy, glorious home, and see us. Where is the passion and the might you used to show on our behalf? Where are your mercy and compassion now? Surely you are still our Father! Even if Abraham and Jacob would disown us, Lord, you would still be our Father. You are our Redeemer from ages past.

2.5 Do you hear what just happened? The people don't say, "We are the children of Abraham, so save us." They can't say that anymore. Abraham doesn't know them. The old foundation is gone. In the Hebrew, this verse has something remarkable built into it.

2.6 The word for "You" (Attah) is inserted twice, in a way that's grammatically unnecessary. The sentence would work without it. But the prophet puts it in anyway — twice — because he needs the weight of it. It's as if he's saying: not Abraham, but You. Not Jacob, but You. Every other name fails, but You alone are our Father. This is not a calm theological statement. This is a community standing in the wreckage of everything that used to tell them who they were, and discovering that there is exactly one thing left standing.

"But Now"

3.1 So here we are. We've stood in the wreckage with Israel. Every name that used to guarantee identity has gone silent. But the text doesn't let the people stop there. Before Isaiah 64 gives us an answer, it makes the people say something else first:

Isaiah 64:6 NIV

All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

3.2 A leaf in the wind doesn't fight back. It just goes wherever it's carried. That's the picture — not strength fading slowly, but total surrender to something bigger than yourself. And only after that confession do we arrive at the words we already read:

Isaiah 64:8 NKJV

But now, O Lord, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You our potter; And all we are the work of Your hand.

3.2.1 Now, here's something I don't want to rush past. Verse 8 — "you are our Father, we are the clay" — that's not where this prayer ends. The very next breath, the people are still looking at the ashes. They say it plainly:

Isaiah 64:9–12 ESV

Be not so terribly angry, O Lord, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people. Your holy cities have become a wilderness; Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation.

Our holy and beautiful house, where our fathers praised you, has been burned by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins. Will you restrain yourself at these things, O Lord? Will you keep silent, and afflict us so terribly?

3.2.2 Notice what that means. They didn't say "but now, you are our Father" and then suddenly feel fine. The temple was still burned the next morning. The city was still a wasteland. Surrendering to the Potter didn't undo the wreckage — it just gave them somewhere to stand while they kept looking at it.

3.2.3 Maybe some of you know that feeling. You've said your own version of "but now, you are my Father." You've meant it. And the ruins didn't disappear the next morning either. A father who's gone is still gone. A future that feels uncertain is still uncertain the day after graduation. Isaiah doesn't pretend otherwise. The prayer keeps crying out, even after the surrender. That's not weak faith — that's what faith looks like when it's being honest.

3.3 In Hebrew, "but now" is one word — Wě-'attāh. It is not the conclusion of an argument, and it's not a five-point plan for getting more spiritual. It's a white flag. It's what's left to say once every other option has run out. That pivot belongs to all of us in this room, whether you're a father, or a graduate, or both, or neither. So let's take it in two directions.

3.4 Go back to 63:16 for a moment. Did you notice the two words sitting side by side: Father and Redeemer? In Hebrew, the second word is Go'el, and it's not just poetry. A go'el was a specific legal role in ancient Israel — the family member responsible for buying back a relative who had fallen into debt or slavery. Not someone who sends a sympathy card, but someone who pays.

3.5 So when Isaiah calls God both Father and Go'el, he's saying something very particular: this is not a father who loves from a safe distance while you sort out your own mess. This is a father who steps into the cost. Fathers, that's the image we're called to carry — not perfect provision, not flawless wisdom, but presence that's willing to pay. And most of you didn't invent that image out of nowhere. Someone showed it to you first, however imperfectly or incompletely. Somewhere behind every father in this room is another father who shaped what fatherhood looked like, for better or for worse.

3.6 Now, graduates, here's where the same verse speaks differently to you. "We are the clay, and you are our potter." You're standing at the edge of something open. No one's handed you a script for what comes next. And the temptation — a very natural one — is to think that since no one's handing you a script, it's up to you to write it. To shape yourself. To be your own potter.

3.7 But the text says something almost countercultural here: you are not the potter. You are the clay. And that's not a demotion — it's actually a relief. The shape of your life was never supposed to rest entirely on your own hands. Surrendering your plans to the Potter isn't giving up control you needed. It's giving back control you were never meant to carry alone.

3.8 Here's what ties these together. For graduates, one day, some of you will be fathers and mothers yourselves. The clay being shaped today will, in time, hold someone else's hand, guiding them the way you were guided — even while you're still being shaped yourself.

3.9 And for fathers, when you look at the graduates sitting here today, you're not just watching their future. You're remembering your own. You're remembering the father, or the absence of one, that shaped what you understood love to look like. This whole text — Father, Redeemer, Potter — isn't really about a single generation. It's about what gets handed down. The shape we're given becomes the shape we give.

3.10 That's why what happens after graduation matters so much — not because the next ten years will determine your worth, but because the next ten years are exactly where the kind of love you carry forward gets formed, the kind you'll one day hand to someone else.

The Father Who Pays, and the Hands We're Held In

4.1 Now, here's something worth pausing on. Isaiah's people cried out for a Go'el, a Redeemer who pays the price to bring his family home. They didn't yet know what that would look like. They just knew they needed it.

4.2 We're not in that position anymore. We know what it looked like. Paul writes in Galatians that God sent his Son "to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons," and then, almost immediately after, that because of this, we can cry out "Abba, Father." It's the same cry Isaiah's people were making in the dark. Almost the same word: Abba. Ab. Father.

Galatians 4:4–6 ESV

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”

4.3 The Go'el Isaiah's community was begging to see eventually walked into the wreckage himself — not from a safe distance, but into the cost. That's what the cross is: Go'el logic taken all the way to its end. The Father didn't just declare himself Father. He paid to make it true. So when we say, "But now, you are our Father," we're not saying something Israel hoped for and never got. We're saying something that already happened.

4.4 For fathers, here's your invitation this morning. You don't have to be a perfect go'el to your children. You just have to be willing to pay something — your time, your patience, your presence, even your own unfinished healing — and trust that the perfect Redeemer is filling in everywhere you fall short. Every father in this room received an image of fatherhood from somewhere, good or broken, present or absent. Today, you get to ask: which parts of that image am I handing down, and which parts need to end with me? That's not guilt. That's stewardship.

4.5 For the graduates, your invitation is different, but it rhymes. You're not the potter. You never were. The relief in that isn't passivity — it's permission: permission to stop pretending you have to architect a flawless future by sheer will, and permission to let your life be shaped by hands that have already proven they're willing to pay for you. That doesn't mean don't plan. It means hold the plan open-handed. Clay that grips too tightly never gets a new shape.

Closing Image and Questions

5.1 I think about my father again — laughing at me, covered in flour and yogurt, telling me it was tradition, telling me his own graduation had been even worse. That was the first time he ever let me see him as someone who had once stood exactly where I was standing. That's such a small thing. But it's the same shape as this whole text. A father saying: I know what it is to stand there. I'm still here. And I'm not done shaping what comes next.

5.2 Whatever you came in here carrying this morning — a complicated relationship with your own father, or the wide-open uncertainty of what's next after graduation — the invitation is the same one Israel found in the ashes: "But now, O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay. You are our potter." Not because we have it figured out, but because we don't have to. So let me leave you with a few questions to carry home today.

For Fathers: what part of the image you received from your own father do you want to hand down, and what part do you want to let end with you?

For the Graduates: what would it look like, this week, to hold your plans with an open hand instead of a clenched fist?

For all of us: when the names we used to lean on go silent, can we say, with Israel, "But now, You are our Father" — and mean it?