The below video can also be accessed on YouTube at https://youtu.be/tEQN3nS_0Ec?t=1321. The link goes to the timestamp in the video when the sermon starts. The video itself contains more than just the sermon; it is the Sunday morning worship service of Faith Community Church in Hampton, NH from October 26, 2025. Brian Abasciano, the President of SEA, is also the Senior Pastor of Faith Community Church. And this sermon is on a passage that can be considered relevant to the Arminian/Calvinist debate as it talks about the Jewish people not being able to believe in Christ because God hardened their hearts. The sermon does not focus on the Arminian/Calvinism debate but is an expositional sermon on the passage from an Arminian scholar and pastor. The audio of the sermon may be found at https://archive.org/details/20251026101751. And the projector slides for the sermon may be accessed in pdf or Powerpoint format.
Brian Abasciano, Sermon on John 12:37-41 — “Escaping Hard-heartedness, Darkness, and Judgment Part 1”
Some notes from Abasciano:
I wish I had included (or in light of time, been able to include) several things that I left out. One was the nature of ability in John’s language in saying the Jewish people could not believe in Christ. In light of the context and OT background, I would argue that he is talking about them being unable to believe because of their attitude, not because of being prevented by God. But that might be clear enough by what I do say in the sermon. I just wish I had been more explicit about John’s actual language of inability to believe there.
A second thing I would ideally have included was more explanation of the dynamic of poetic justice involved with God bringing the people to judge themselves and making their own sin its own judgment.
Third, I wish I had mentioned evidence for this view in the context of the passage itself, where Jesus basically indicates people judge themselves by not obeying his word (John 12:47-48).
Fourth, I also would have liked to mention the connection of this to other passages, such as Jesus’ parables and this method of dealing with people evidenced in them.
