Judges 3:7 And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and forget the Lord their God, and served Baalim and the groves.
The. Response of the people to Moses’ Commandments and Joshua’s charge was to forget the Lord who loved and delivered them and go serve the Canaanite gods and goddesses. The Lord considered this to be evil. We may consider our sins to be minor, little mistakes, and no big deal, but God sees them as worse than bad: it is evil. They would forget God and serve the demon gods of the world. The Baal idols and Asherah poles were everywhere, in every grove and high place.
The convenience and availability of selfish idolatry is ever present to us as long as we are in the world, living in the sinful flesh, and open to the devil’s prowling. Every sin, large or little, is an ignoring, a forgetting, and a spurning of the love of God. With the Spirit’s eyes we see sin as idolatry. For instance, Samuel says to Saul: “Covetousness is as the sin of idolatry.” Sin serves the god of this world. Jesus says: “Everyone who practices sin is a slave to (serves) sin.”
We certainly don’t want to be seen as loving and serving the devil, and we could never admit to that, but what does Sin do? When the Word reveals to us the holy thoughts of God toward our sin, we repent in dust and ashes. Then the Word reveals to us the loving thoughts of God toward us in Christ, we believe and are saved. It is not easy nor natural for us to see our lives the way God sees them. The Spirit must reveal God’s thoughts about us in the Word of Law and Gospel. Thank God! He does!