Ephraim, what have I to do any more with idols? I answer, and will take care of him. I am like a green fir tree; From me your fruit is found."
This passage is in very vivid contrast to what Ephraim had previously said, as it is recorded in the early part of Hosea's prophecy. If you turn to the second chapter, and the fifth verse, you will find this same Ephraim saying, "I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink." These lovers were the idol gods, and Ephraim was determined to go after them, for she ascribed to them her various comforts, her bread and her water, her wool and her flax, her oil and her drink. So desperately set was this Ephraim upon going after her idols that God had much ado to drag her away from them, for that second chapter continues, "Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths. And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them." So, you see, this people had been desperately set upon following after idols; yet, before the prophecy is ended, we find this same Ephraim saying, "What have I to do any more with idols?" What a change the grace of God works in the heart! It reverses the action of the entire machinery of our being. It puts, "No," for "Yes," and "Yes," for "No." It is a radical change; that which we hated, we come to love; and that which we loved, we come to hate. Whereas we said, concerning this and that, "I will," and "I shall," the grace of God makes us change our note and we say "I will not; by God's grace, I will not act as I said I would, for what have I to do any more with idols?" At the beginning of this discourse, I would like to put to each one whom I am addressing this question, "Have you, my friend, ever experienced this great and total change?" Remember, if you have not, it is imperatively necessary that you should if you desire to be numbered among the Lord's people. "Ye must be born again," and this being born again is not the evolving of some good thing out of you that is already there hidden away, but the putting into you of something which is not there. It is the quickening of you from your death in sin. It is a change in you as great as was wrought upon the person of our Lord Jesus when, after lying in the grave dead, he was brought to life. Nothing short of this new birth, this resurrection, this thorough, total, radical change will make you meet to enter heaven. You have no right to expect that you will ever stand within yon gates of pearl unless you have been created anew in Christ Jesus. He that sitteth on the throne saith, "Behold, I make all things new;" and he must make you new, or else, into the new kingdom where there is a new heaven and a new earth, you can never come; nay, you cannot even see that kingdom, for our Lord's words are as true to-day as when he said to Nicodemus, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Let that searching thought remain with you, and try yourselves by it. But now I shall take you at once to the words of the text, that we may think of the change which was wrought upon Israel, or Ephraim. We will consider, first,  the character of this change: "Ephraim shall say, What have I any more to do with idols?" Then, secondly, let us note  the cause of this change; and, thirdly,  the effect of this change.  I. First, then, we are to consider THE CHARACTER OF THIS CHANGE. Ephraim had been besotted with her idolatry. The Israelites were never contented with idols of one sort; they went to Moab, to Egypt, to Philistia, to Assyria, to the Hittites, and to any other ites, to borrow idols. They introduced fresh idols from distant countries, they were never satisfied with the number of their images; yet now, when God has effectually wrought upon their hearts, they say, one voice speaking for all, "What have I to do any more with idols?" Notice, that  this change was a very hearty and spontaneous one. Ephraim did not say, "I should like to worship idols, yet I dare not." She did not say, "I should like to set up graven images, but I must not." On the contrary, she herself said, "What have I to do any more with idols?" I wish that some people whom I might mention understood what conversion means. They say to us, "So you do not attend the theatre; what a denial it must be to you!" It is nothing of the kind, for we never have a wish or desire to go there. What have we, the twice-born, to do with these vain things of the world? "Oh, but the drunkard's cup it must be a very great piece of self-denial to you to abjure it!" On the contrary, it is loathsome to us; we have come to feel as if the most nauseous medicine that could be mixed would be sweeter to us than that cup. What have we to do any more with idols? So, each thing that is evil becomes to the real convert a disgusting and distasteful thing. He does not say, "Oh, how I should like it! How I long for it! What a hungering I have after it!" If he detects in himself the least hankering after evil of any kind, he cries out, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" But as far as the work of God's Spirit has been wrought upon him, he has a thorough hearty severance and divorce from those things which he once loved, and he has as great a horror of them as once he had a desire for them. Now he sings, 