What is your purpose in life? Many of us define ourselves by what we do for a living, and consequently have a hard time when we have to retire. Others consider their relationships as most important to them: they live to love and serve their family and their friends. Still others seek meaning in their hobbies or sports.

But as God pointed out to His people in Ezekiel chapter 15, they were not, in fact, primarily made for any of these purposes. Instead, God made them to be in fellowship with Him, and to worship Him alone. So when they gave their lives to other gods, they ceased to perform the function for which they had been created.

Moreover, God made it clear to Ezekiel that His people weren’t really good for anything else. Oh, they may have wanted to be strong oaks, whose wood can be fashioned into anything from furniture to flooring. Instead, God insisted that they were actually more like grapevines, whose wood is too flexible even to make a peg on which to hang a pot (Ezekiel 15:3). No, just as God’s people were made to worship Him alone, grapevines are really only good for producing grapes.

But God’s people had been unfaithful to Him. Instead of producing the fruit of God’s worship, they had given their hearts to all sorts of other gods (Ezekiel 15:8), devoting their lives to pleasure and profit and perversion. But when the Assyrians invaded Israel, and when the Babylonians captured Jerusalem, they had lost all those things. Thus, God said that His people were actually like a grapevine that had been charred in a fire (Ezekiel 15:5), a vine that couldn’t bear fruit anymore, a vine that was truly worthless.

And the same thing could be true for us. If we refuse to receive Christ as Savior and bow the knee to Him as Lord, if we thus reject the worship and fellowship of God, the purpose for which we were created, we won’t be able to find meaning or success in any of the other things to which we might try to devote our lives. For if we are thus cut off from God, the only true source of light and life, then the only thing remaining for us is darkness and death.

So, why not come to the light of the world (John 8:12)? Why not come to the One Who is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6)? After all, that’s why He made us, and that’s the only way any of us can truly bear fruit (John 15:4).

Ezekiel 15:1-8 (NASB)

Then the word of the LORD came to me saying,
2 “Son of man, how is the wood of the vine better than any wood of a branch which is among the trees of the forest?
3 “Can wood be taken from it to make anything, or can men take a peg from it on which to hang any vessel?
4 “If it has been put into the fire for fuel, and the fire has consumed both of its ends, and its middle part has been charred, is it then useful for anything?
5 “Behold, while it is intact, it is not made into anything. How much less, when the fire has consumed it and it is charred, can it still be made into anything!
6 “Therefore, thus says the Lord God, ‘As the wood of the vine among the trees of the forest, which I have given to the fire for fuel, so have I given up the inhabitants of Jerusalem;
7 and I set My face against them. Though they have come out of the fire, yet the fire will consume them. Then you will know that I am the LORD, when I set My face against them.
8 ‘Thus I will make the land desolate, because they have acted unfaithfully,'” declares the Lord God.