Dad's Spaghetti Sauce

“How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Ps 119:103)

I make my own spaghetti sauce. Actually, it is not “my own”, but my dad’s recipe that he passed on to me, and we are not even Italian. He has “tinkered” with it over the years, and come up with a great blend of ingredients that works very nicely on my taste buds. It has fennel, parsley, anise, red pepper, and lots of sugar, along with the other standard “spaghetti sauce” spices. It definitely has a different taste. The first time someone tries it, they usually don’t like it. They are expecting a traditional marinara flavor, and my dad’s sauce hits you from a distinctly different angle. It takes some getting used to. You have to let it “grow on you”, to which some have replied, “Yeah, so do warts.” I absolutely love it, but not everyone does. Some people just have no taste.

The word of God is a lot like my dad’s spaghetti sauce. (I’ll bet you never heard an analogy like that before!) First of all, even though I have my own Bible with my own notes in the margins, it is not really “mine”. My Father in heaven passed it on to me. I didn’t write it. Many skeptics of the Bible complain when we quote the word of God that we are being “judgmental” or harsh. It is not my “recipe”. If you don’t like my Father’s formula, take it up with him. One of the biggest reasons why people do not like the Bible is that they are expecting something else. Lost man has an inbred pre-disposition to the word of God. The world thinks it is just “the good book”, filled with all sorts of wonderful praise for religion, “spirituality”, and the works of mankind. While there is plenty of positive encouragement in the Bible, it is also very honest about who we really are. Psalm 39:5 says, “…every man at his best state is altogether vanity.” Vanity in the Bible is nothing. When we are at our best, we are nothing. Jesus said, “Without me ye can do nothing.” (John 15:5) Mankind as a fallen race is described in Romans 3:10-12: “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” It says together, we are unprofitable. We are like “fractions”. None of us are “whole”, because “…all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) When fractions are multiplied, the resulting number gets smaller. Every time another one of us jumps into the pile of humanity to try to help us along in our quest to “make the world a better place” we actually make it worse because we bring our sin into the mix. The “fractions” of individuals keeps getting us farther from the mark.

Those things are not palatable to the natural man. The first time he “tastes” those truths, it hits him the wrong way because he is expecting something else. I mentioned that my dad’s sauce has lots of sugar. It is sweet when people don’t expect it to be. The Bible says, “The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.” (Proverbs 27:7) Lost man thinks he is “full”. Therefore, when he first tastes of the sweetness of the word of God, he does not like it because it tells him that he is a filthy sinner who needs the Saviour. But I like the sweetness of my dad’s spaghetti sauce, and I have grown very accustomed to the sweetness of the word of God. I appreciate God telling me that my best is a big fat zero. It shows me that even though I am a sinner, God loved me enough to “send the very best” – his Son to die for my sins.

Once you learn to appreciate the Bible for what it really is – God’s revelation to man – it is sweet. Even the bitter parts are sweet because they reveal to us that our God in heaven loves us and wants us to come the saving knowledge of his Son. If you have not “tasted” this wonderful news, why not come to Jesus today? Give it another taste. Don’t let your pre-conceived ideas keep you from a relationship with God and a home in heaven. “O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.” (Psalm 34:8)