The following exception has been noted when the WL JMS drivers failed to connect: Exception in thread "jms.jobs.messageListenerContainer.SRUpdateFromSiebel-1" java.lang.NullPointerException at java.lang.String.indexOf(String.java:1564) at java.lang.String.indexOf(String.java:1546) at org.springframework.jms.support.JmsUtils.buildExceptionMessage(JmsUtils.java:255) at org.springframework.jms.listener.DefaultMessageListenerContainer.handleListenerSetupFailure(DefaultMessageListenerContainer.java:745) at org.springframework.jms.listener.DefaultMessageListenerContainer$AsyncMessageListenerInvoker.run(DefaultMessageListenerContainer.java:897) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:595) The problem is this line of code in JmsUtils.buildException: if (linkedEx != null && message.indexOf(linkedEx.getMessage()) == -1) { linkedEx may not be null, but the message can be null, so it simply need to be: if (linkedEx != null && linkedEx.getMessage() != null && message.indexOf(linkedEx.getMessage()) == -1) {