The Poison of a Fruitless Faith Text: Jeremiah 8:13-17
Introduction: The Covenant Comes Calling
We live in an age that desperately wants to have its cake and eat it too. Our culture wants the blessings of liberty without the restraints of law. It wants the fruit of Christian civilization without the root of Christ. It wants peace without the Prince of Peace, and it wants healing without the Great Physician. But God is not a cosmic vending machine, and He is not mocked. What a man sows, that he will also reap. And what a nation sows, that nation will also reap. This is the unalterable law of the harvest, woven into the very fabric of creation.
The prophet Jeremiah is sent to a people in a similar state of delusion. Judah was God's covenant people. They had the Temple, they had the sacrifices, they had the law. They had all the external trappings of religion. They looked like a fruitful fig tree from a distance. But upon closer inspection, they were all leaves and no fruit. They had the form of godliness but denied its power. They had replaced the fear of the Lord with a comfortable, therapeutic deism that made no demands on their lives. They mouthed the words "peace, peace," when the God of heaven was declaring war.
The passage before us this morning is a stark and terrifying depiction of what happens when God's patience runs out. It is a description of the covenant curses coming due. We like to talk about the covenant blessings, and rightly so. But the covenant has two sides. God promises blessing for obedience and cursing for disobedience. This is not arbitrary vindictiveness on God's part. It is the necessary consequence of rebellion against the source of all life and goodness. If you cut yourself off from the fountain of living waters, you should not be surprised to find yourself thirsty. If you declare war on the sun, you should not be surprised to find yourself in the dark.
Jeremiah's words are not just for ancient Judah. They are a potent warning for the American church today, which is shot through with the same kind of fruitless religiosity. We have exchanged the hard demands of discipleship for a soft-focus spirituality that offends no one and saves no one. We have become experts at looking like a fig tree while producing nothing but leaves. This passage is God's sovereign response to that kind of hypocrisy. It is a picture of a harvest of wrath, a drink of judgment, and an invasion of inescapable consequences.
The Text
“I will surely gather them up,” declares Yahweh; “There will be no grapes on the vine And no figs on the fig tree, And the leaf will wither; And what I have given them will pass away.” ’ ”
Why are we sitting still? Gather yourselves, and let us go into the fortified cities And let us be silent there Because Yahweh our God has silenced us And given us poisoned water to drink, For we have sinned against Yahweh.
We waited for peace, but there was no good; For a time of healing, but behold, terror!
From Dan is heard the snorting of his horses; At the sound of the neighing of his valiant steeds The whole land quakes; And they come and devour the land as well as its fullness, The city and its inhabitants.
“For behold, I am sending serpents against you, Vipers, for which there is no charm, And they will bite you,” declares Yahweh.
(Jeremiah 8:13-17 LSB)
A Harvest of Nothing (v. 13)
We begin with God's own declaration of judgment, a terrifying reversal of the harvest.
"“I will surely gather them up,” declares Yahweh; “There will be no grapes on the vine And no figs on the fig tree, And the leaf will wither; And what I have given them will pass away.” ’ ” (Jeremiah 8:13)
The Lord begins with a promise of gathering, but it is not a gathering of blessing. It is a gathering for judgment, a clean sweep. The imagery is agricultural because Israel's identity was tied to the land. The vine and the fig tree were symbols of God's blessing and Israel's national life. To sit under one's own vine and fig tree was the picture of shalom, of covenantal peace and prosperity. But here, that image is utterly destroyed.
God comes looking for fruit, and He finds none. This is precisely the enacted parable of our Lord Jesus centuries later when He cursed the barren fig tree. That tree had all the outward signs of life, it had leaves, but it was fruitless. And Jesus, the God of Jeremiah incarnate, cursed it, and it withered from the roots. This is a picture of judgment on covenantal hypocrisy. Israel had the leaves of Temple worship, of religious observance, of national pride. But they lacked the fruit of righteousness, justice, and true faith.
And notice the progression. First, there is no fruit, "no grapes... no figs." Then, even the appearance of life vanishes: "And the leaf will wither." God is not just removing the blessing; He is removing the very pretense of blessing. The hypocrisy will be exposed for all to see. Finally, the tragic conclusion: "And what I have given them will pass away." The land, the city, the temple, the law, all of it was a gift from God. And because they used His gifts to rebel against Him, those very gifts would be stripped from them. This is a fundamental principle. When we fail to use God's gifts for His glory, we forfeit them. When the church takes the gift of the gospel and turns it into a self-help program, it should not be surprised when the power of that gospel seems to vanish.
The Bitter Cup of Reality (v. 14-15)
In the next verses, the perspective shifts from God's declaration to the people's dawning horror. Reality is beginning to break through their delusion.
"Why are we sitting still? Gather yourselves, and let us go into the fortified cities And let us be silent there Because Yahweh our God has silenced us And given us poisoned water to drink, For we have sinned against Yahweh." (Jeremiah 8:14 LSB)
The people are finally stirred from their complacency. The threat is no longer distant. But their reaction is one of panic, not repentance. They cry, "Let us go into the fortified cities." This is the natural human response to God's judgment: run, hide, trust in your own strength. They look to their walls for salvation, not to the Lord. But they know, deep down, that it is futile. They go there to "be silent," or to "perish" as some translations have it. The Hebrew word implies a final, desolate end.
And here is the crucial confession. They finally recognize the source of their calamity: "Because Yahweh our God has silenced us." The false prophets who promised peace are now silent, their lies exposed. And God Himself has given them "poisoned water to drink." This is a powerful metaphor for judgment. Water is essential for life, but God has turned their very source of sustenance into a cup of wrath. This is not an accident. It is a divine verdict. And they know why: "For we have sinned against Yahweh." The confession is accurate, but it is a confession of despair, not a confession of hope. It is the cry of a man who has been found guilty, not the plea of a son asking for mercy.
Verse 15 reveals the depth of their self-deception.
"We waited for peace, but there was no good; For a time of healing, but behold, terror!" (Jeremiah 8:15 LSB)
They were waiting for peace because that is what the false prophets were selling. They were listening to the soothing voices that told them what their itching ears wanted to hear. They wanted a God who would grade on a curve, a God who would overlook their idolatry and immorality because, after all, they were still His people. They expected healing when they had never acknowledged their sickness. But you cannot be healed of a disease you refuse to diagnose. And so, instead of peace, they got terror. Instead of good, they got calamity. Reality, in the form of the Babylonian army, was about to crash their party. This is a sober warning to us. If we are waiting for a peace that is not grounded in repentance and submission to Christ, we are waiting for a fantasy. The only true peace is peace with God through the blood of His Son. Any other peace is a ceasefire with hell, and it will not last.
The Unstoppable Invasion (v. 16)
The terror they behold is now given a sound and a location. The judgment is no longer abstract; it is at the door.
"From Dan is heard the snorting of his horses; At the sound of the neighing of his valiant steeds The whole land quakes; And they come and devour the land as well as its fullness, The city and its inhabitants." (Jeremiah 8:16 LSB)
Dan was the northernmost tribe of Israel. This means the invasion from Babylon has already begun. It is sweeping down from the north, and the news of it is terrifying. The "snorting of his horses" is the sound of an unstoppable military machine. This is not a border skirmish; this is total war. "The whole land quakes." The foundations of their world are being shaken. God is using a pagan nation as His rod of discipline, and there is no escape.
The invasion is comprehensive. They "devour the land as well as its fullness, The city and its inhabitants." Nothing will be spared. The covenant curses laid out in Deuteronomy 28 are coming to pass with terrifying precision. God had warned that if they disobeyed, He would bring a nation from afar, "a nation whose language you will not understand, a nation of fierce countenance" (Deut. 28:49-50), and they would besiege their gates and devour their produce. Jeremiah is witnessing the fulfillment of that ancient curse. God keeps His promises, both the promises of blessing and the promises of judgment.
The Uncharmable Serpents (v. 17)
The final verse gives us one of the most chilling images of judgment in all of Scripture.
"“For behold, I am sending serpents against you, Vipers, for which there is no charm, And they will bite you,” declares Yahweh." (Jeremiah 8:17 LSB)
God Himself is the one sending this plague. The invaders are not just a historical accident; they are "serpents" and "vipers" sent by Yahweh. This imagery connects their sin directly to its source. The serpent in the garden deceived our first parents, and Israel has been listening to the lies of that same serpent through their idolatry and false prophets. Now, God is judging them by handing them over to the very character of their sin.
And these are no ordinary serpents. These are vipers "for which there is no charm." In the ancient world, snake charmers were common. They believed they could soothe and control deadly snakes with their music or incantations. But God says this judgment cannot be managed. It cannot be negotiated with. There is no clever trick, no religious ritual, no diplomatic solution that will turn this away. The bite is coming. The poison is certain. The declaration is final: "And they will bite you," declares Yahweh.
Conclusion: The Only Antidote
This is a bleak and terrifying passage. It shows us a people who had every spiritual advantage and squandered it. They had a fruitful land and produced no fruit. They had living water and chose to drink poison. They had the word of the Lord and preferred charming lies. And the result was a harvest of judgment from which there was no escape.
So where is the good news? The good news is found by looking at this passage through the lens of the cross. For we too are fruitless. We too have sinned against Yahweh. We too have drunk the poisoned water of rebellion and listened to the charming lies of the serpent. We deserve the unstoppable invasion of God's wrath. We deserve the uncharmable vipers of judgment.
But God, in His infinite mercy, sent another kind of serpent. He sent His own Son, Jesus Christ, to be "lifted up, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness" (John 3:14). On that cross, Jesus became a curse for us. He drank the full cup of God's poisoned wrath that we deserved to drink. He was bitten by the vipers of judgment, and He took all their venom into Himself.
He did this so that all who look to Him in faith might be saved. The only antidote to the poison of sin is the blood of Christ. The only refuge from the unstoppable invasion of God's judgment is to hide in the wounds of Christ. The only way to become fruitful is to be grafted into Christ, the true vine.
This passage from Jeremiah forces us to ask a hard question. Are we a fruitful branch, or are we a barren fig tree, all leaves and no substance? Are we drinking from the fountain of living water, or are we sipping the poisoned water of this world? Are we listening to the hard truths of Scripture, or are we looking for a charmer to soothe our conscience? The harvest is coming. The horses are snorting in the distance. The serpents are real. Flee from the wrath to come and take refuge in the only one who can save, the Lord Jesus Christ.