The Real Deal

Dr. Evan Kane ... was the chief surgeon ... of Kane Summit Hospital ... in New York City.

He had practiced his specialty ... for 37 years.

Over the course of time, ... he came to question the wisdom of using general anesthesia ... for every surgery.

He believed people would recover quicker ... if they only used ... local anesthesia.

Yet, ... no matter how convinced Dr. Kane was about his theory, ... he had one problem.

No one wanted to go under his knife ... while they were awake.

Everyone he spoke with ... had the same fear.

They did not want to feel the pain of the scalpel ...while they were awake ...during the surgery.

After much searching, ... Kane finally found a willing subject.

It helped ... that it was a relatively ... common procedure.

According to Dr. Kane's own records, ... during his practice ... he had performed around 4,000 appendectomies, ... so the procedure was almost second nature to him.

The patient was prepped ... and brought into the operating room.

The local anesthesia ... was carefully administered.

As he had always done, ... he cut into the right side of the abdomen ... and entered the body cavity.

He tied off the blood vessels, ... found the appendix, excised it, ... and finished ... by sewing the incision.

To his own credit, ... he proved himself right.

Throughout the surgery ... the patient felt very little discomfort.

In fact, ... the patient was up and about the very next afternoon, ... which was remarkable ... since this occurred in 1921.

At that time ... when you had your appendix removed ... you had a hospital stay of 6 to 8 days.

This was a milestone in the world of medicine.

However ... what made it particularly noteworthy was that the patient ... and the doctor were the same person.

Yes ... Dr. Kane operated on himself. (Pause)

Believe it or not, ... that is what I'm going to ask of you today.

What I want us to do is something like ... "spiritual exploratory surgery."

I want us to root around a bit ... in our souls, to take a hard and honest look at our spiritual health, ... and to see if our faith walk ... is as healthy ... as it should be.

Our Gospel reading this morning from Matthew ... is near the beginning of Jesus' most famous message ... often called, ... "The Sermon on the Mount."

In this message, ... Jesus called his followers ... to the highest standards ... of conduct. (Pause)

He challenged us to ... "turn the other cheek." (Matthew 5:38-40)

He commanded us to love our enemy, to forgive those who do us wrong, and to be sure we act with the purest motives. (Luke 6:27; Matthew 6:14)

He said there were two roads, ... a wide road that leads to destruction ... and a narrow one that leads to life. (Matthew 7:13-14)

And here in today's Gospel text ... he calls those who choose to follow Him ... to be a godly influence on the world in which they live.

Those are tough commands.

Jesus clearly expects the world to be transformed by our presence.

Hear Jesus words to us: BIBLE "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men." END (Matthew 5:13)

Now at first blush ... this is a little difficult to understand.

There is no such thing as ... "unsalty salt."

If you pour the granules out of your saltshaker ... and it's not salty, ... well ... somebody played a trick on you ... because pure salt does not go bad.

Sodium Chloride, ... table salt ... like Morton's that you buy at the store is ... pure.

But the Morton Salt Co. ... did not exist ... back in the first century.

Then ... When they mined salt from the quarry or pit it was never ... completely pure.

Occasionally the salt they gathered ... was so impure that it was not very salty ... at all.

When that happened ... they would cast it out the door .... to harden the pathway ... that led to their home.

What Jesus is saying in this text is ... that if we as His followers are going to change the world ... we have to be pure salt, ... we have to be the real deal.

We must be ... the real deal.

Our lives must not ... in fact ... cannot be a mixture of impurities.

We have to be uncompromised, ... pure, and yes ...authentic.

That is the word I want you to remember.