Sermon Central
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The Melting Snail Series
Contributed by Charles Payne on Oct 17, 2025 (message contributor)
Summary: You don’t often find snails in Scripture. Yet David, in one of his fiercest psalms, chooses the snail as a picture of the wicked — “melting away as they go.”
“THE MELTING SNAIL”
SEEING THE BIG PICTURE
TEXT
Psalm 58:8 (KJV) “As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away…”
PROLOGUE: THE SLOWEST CREATURE IN SCRIPTURE
You don’t often find snails in Scripture. They don’t fight, fly, or roar. They move silently, leave slimy icky trails behind them, and live encased in their own fragile armor.
Yet David, in one of his fiercest psalms, chooses the snail as a picture of the wicked — “melting away as they go.”
That’s a terrifying image: a creature that dissolves in the very act of moving forward.
Not struck down suddenly, but self-dissolving, wasting away from within.
I. THE HEBREW MEANING
The Hebrew word translated “snail” is ????????? (shablûl) — a rare word that literally means “to flow” or “to trail moisture.”
It comes from the root shabal, meaning to sink, to trail, to flow down, to waste away.
So David isn’t thinking of a modern garden snail in isolation — he’s describing a slimy, shrinking creature whose very movement leaves behind its own substance.
In other words: it advances by losing itself.
Hence the phrase “melteth as it goeth” — or more literally, “as it goes, it dissolves.”
II. THE MELTING SNAIL — A PICTURE OF SELF-DECAY
The snail carries its house — its world — on its back. It moves slowly, dragging its comfort and protection with it. But that same trail it leaves behind is its undoing — a thin film of itself, evaporating in the heat of the sun.
That’s what sin does to the soul.
It promises shelter and satisfaction, but each indulgence leaves a trail of loss — a little more strength gone, a little more conscience seared, a little more life evaporated.
Proverbs 14:12: “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”
The sinner isn’t destroyed all at once; he melts by degrees.
He slides through life leaving behind evidence of his own decay.
Sin corrodes like rust — slowly, silently, almost politely at first.
Alcohol doesn’t kill in a single sip — it wears the liver down one drink at a time.
Smoking doesn’t collapse the lungs in a day — it steals breath one drag after another.
The brain cells of the marijuana user don’t die in one night — they fade so gradually he doesn’t notice he’s thinking slower, caring less, slipping further.
Sin works the same way — it melts the moral will drop by drop until the soul is too numb to feel the loss.
III. THE SNAIL AND THE SOUL OF A NATION
What David said of the wicked man could be said of a wicked people.
Civilizations don’t usually die by explosion — they dissolve by corrosion.
Moral fiber melts first, then integrity, then truth itself.
Psalm 58 isn’t about individuals alone; it’s about a society that has lost its justice.
It opens with:
“Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O congregation? do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of men?” — Psalm 58:1
David condemns a nation whose leaders lie, whose courts are corrupt, and whose moral compass spins without true north.
Look around:
• Our judges redefine truth to fit convenience.
• Our media melts fact into fiction.
• Our schools have erased prayer but invited confusion.
• Our children grow up knowing every app but not the Ten Commandments.
That’s the melting snail of modern civilization — decaying from the inside while boasting of progress.
The snail doesn’t explode — it oozes away.
So does a nation that abandons God.
“The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” — Psalm 9:17
America, like the snail, is melting while still moving.
We are technologically fast but spiritually dissolving.
Our pace hides our decay.
Psalm 33:12: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.”
Without God, movement is not progress — it’s disintegration.
IV. THE CONTRAST: MELTING SIN VS. REFINING FIRE
There’s another kind of melting in Scripture — the kind God welcomes.
When Isaiah saw the Lord, he said, “Woe is me! for I am undone” — literally, melted. (Isaiah 6:5)
The difference?
The wicked melt in sin; the righteous melt in surrender.
When sin melts us, we disappear.
When grace melts us, we are remade.
Malachi 3:3: “He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.”
Better to melt in the Master’s fire than dissolve in your own pride.
Ezekiel 22:20 (KJV) As they gather silver, and brass, and iron, and lead, and tin, into the midst of the furnace, to blow the fire upon it, to melt it; so will I gather you in mine anger and in my fury, and I will leave you there, and melt you.
V. A PERSONAL APPLICATION: LEAVE A TRAIL OF LIGHT
