Skip to content Not about Legalism but Alignment | The Principles of the Sabbath and the Presence of God Aug 17 · 21 min ...more
Not about Legalism but Alignment | The Principles of the Sabbath and the Presence of God
August 17, 2026 · 21 min
In this eye-opening episode, Rabbi Schneider shows that Shabbat isn’t about legalism but about transformation. You’ll discover how honoring the Sabbath can free you from stress, align your life with God’s rhythm, and open the door to deeper intimacy with Him.
Series Discovering The Jewish Jesus
Rabbi Schneider is equipping the body of Christ, building the church, and evangelizing the world. From the Old and New Testament, learn the biblical roots of Christianity and Jesus' Jewish heritage.
August 17, 2026 · 21 min · Discovering The Jewish Jesus
In this eye-opening episode, Rabbi Schneider shows that Shabbat isn’t about legalism but about transformation. You’ll discover how honoring the Sabbath can free you from stress, align your life with God’s rhythm, and open the door to deeper intimacy with Him. ...more Show the full description Show less In this eye-opening episode, Rabbi Schneider shows that Shabbat isn’t about legalism but about transformation. You’ll discover how honoring the Sabbath can free you from stress, align your life with God’s rhythm, and open the door to deeper intimacy with Him.
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In this video 0:00 Shabbat: Sanctification and Refreshment10:03 Creating a Sanctuary of True Rest11:00 Practical Discipline for Divine Blessing14:30 Turning from Pleasure to Delight in God19:58 Eternal Pattern and Ministry Call
Shabbat: Sanctification and Refreshment 0:07 I wanna look at principles of Shabbat, of the Sabbath, that are very important for us to help us be motivated to apply the Sabbath to our life.0:19 Because remember, there's an anointing and a blessing that comes to us when we get into divine alignment and do what the creator did working 6 days and0:30 resting 1. So to begin to understand the theological implications and the blessing that's been made available to us, let's read now the book of Exodus chapter 31 verse 130:42 through 18. We're gonna find 2 things in this reading that will help us understand the blessing and the potential that's here for us as we apply it to our lives.0:51 Alright. So the Lord is speaking to Moses and he says, but as for you, speak to the sons of Israel saying, you shall surely observe my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout1:03 your generations, that you may know that I am the lord who sanctifies you. Therefore, you are to observe the Sabbath for it is holy to you. Mhmm. Everyone who profanes it1:14 shall surely be put to death. For whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. For 6 days work may be done, but on the 7th day there1:26 is a Sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord, and whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall surely be put to death. So the sons of Israel shall observe the Sabbath to celebrate1:38 the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the sons of Israel forever for in 6 days, the Lord made heaven and earth but on the 7th day, he
1:50 ceased from labor and was refreshed.
1:52 Okay. So let's stop right there for a 2nd. I want you to draw attention to that word refresh. The Lord rested on the 7th day and was refreshed. Now we know that God is
2:04 not like a man that he becomes weary or tired, but this is what we call in theology anthropomorphic language. Uh-huh. In other words, it's God speaking as though he's human. He's speaking in such a way
2:16 to identify with us. But notice here, God is saying he was refreshed. And so the blessing that the Lord wants to impart to us each week on Shabbat is
2:28 to refresh us. He wants to refresh us. We need to stop. We need to stop running, running, running. We need to stop in order to be refreshed. And notice also in the 13th verse
2:40 here that the Lord said that we would know that he's the Lord who sanctifies us. You write just now, Dustin, that you might know the lord is saying, the lord is speaking, that you might know that I am
2:52 the lord, get this now, who sanctifies you. So 2 principles here that we're deriving from this from this, from this reading. Number 1, that the lord
3:03 sanctifies us, that we would know that the lord is sanctifying us when we participate in honoring him through Shabbat. And secondly, in doing so, we would be refreshed. You
3:15 see, when you and I stop on Shabbat and obey him and honor him, something happens in our life. He does something in us that brings us up to the next spiritual level. Yeah.
3:27 Because we're not just human doings, our work does not define us. We're human beings. Right. And so by stopping, what happens is we give the Lord an opportunity
3:39 to realign us and strengthen us and empower us, and we find ourselves ascending and growing in the strength of God's spirit, and we come to a realization that there's a divine empowerment that's
3:50 taking place upon our life. And during Shabbat, when we give the day to the Lord, when we honor him as holy and sanctify him as holy in our life, what the Lord does is he shows us things in
4:02 our life during this day that he wants us to grow in, things that he might want us to turn away from, new things he might wanna bring us into. So there's a sanctification process that takes place when we
4:14 truly take a day a week to honor him on Shabbat. The lord says, you're gonna know that I'm at work in your life and sanctifying you. So if we wanna know that god is truly in the here and in
4:26 the now working in our life today, practice Shabbat and you'll gain a new grasp of this.
4:32 I I gotta be honest, Rabbi. If you hadn't pointed that out, I would have missed it. And I think maybe a lot of us, the church, is missing this because what stood out to me when I read that is you're gonna be put to death
4:43 if you don't celebrate Shabbat. I immediately jumped back into the habit of, like, feeling the law and thinking, like, okay. Oh my gosh. I gotta do this. I gotta do this. And it felt like work. But I what I hear you
4:54 telling me is the principle is actually so much better that God wants to sanctify us and refresh us, and I'm actually missing that blessing because I'm so focused. I was focused on the penalty that Israel was
5:06 gonna face for not doing it.
5:07 Exactly. And remember, we're not under the law anymore. God's not gonna put you to death. Okay? But you're gonna miss an opportunity, a huge opportunity and the truth is eventually everyone's gonna be brought into this
5:17 divine alignment. And we read this in Isaiah 66 where the Lord speaks about the new heavens and the new earth and he said, and all flesh will worship him during Shabbat. So you have to understand that this is not
5:28 something that's done away with. It's something that's relevant today. It's an opportunity to be refreshed, to know the power of God in your life. Mhmm. And eventually, you're gonna get in alignment with it if you're his
5:40 because it's his plan for humanity. And let's read that again, Mark 2 27 and 28, and notice that Jesus is saying the same thing that I'm saying, it's an opportunity for blessing.
5:48 Okay. Mark 2. Mark 2 27 says, Jesus said to them, the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. In verse 28, so the Son of Man is
6:00 Lord even of the Sabbath.
6:03 It's about creating a sanctuary in time. Yeah. When we take a day a week and and let me point out that when we speak about taking a day a week to rest, we're not talking
6:15 about recreation. Okay. We're resting unto the lord. This is Shabbat unto the lord. So taking a day a week to rest unto the Lord. That's what makes it holy. Not
6:27 saying, okay. I'm not gonna work today. I'm gonna go golfing. Today's my Shabbat, and I'm gonna I'm gonna not work. I'm not gonna go into the office, but I'm gonna go golfing. That's not Shabbat.
6:36 Really?
6:36 No.
6:37 K. So it's not about going out and just doing whatever's fun.
6:40 Exactly. It's not about recreating. It's about being restored and refreshed in the presence of the Lord. In fact, Israel was commanded in the Torah to not even leave their house on Shabbat. They were to
6:52 stay in their home. And so you go to Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods today and they build a fence around the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood saying that you can't travel outside of this boundary line because if you
7:04 travel outside of the boundary line, you'll be breaking Shabbat. The point is you're not to be running everywhere. You're supposed to be resting unto the Lord. And so it's it's
7:16 important to to realize that by taking this day, being at home or close to home, not running around in your car because what happens when you run around in the car? You're stressed on the
7:27 road. So the the you you wanna limit your traveling on Shabbat. You don't wanna be driving here and driving there. As much as possible, you wanna limit travel.
7:36 But I can I can drive? Right? Like if if I need to drive for something on that day or am I do I need to not, you know, no matter what I don't drive?
7:44 Well, let me tell you what Orthodox Jews do and then speak directly to your question. So Orthodox Jews, they will buy homes in areas that are that they can walk to synagogue on Shabbat because they
7:56 don't wanna break the commandment. They don't wanna go far from their home.
8:00 Take it that serious.
8:00 They take it that seriously. So so 1st of all, I just wanna let let people know how Orthodox Jews perceive it. For me, I think it's important that I am not driving in my car in such a way that would
8:12 give me cause me stress. We have a park 10 minutes from our home. So Cynthia, sometimes on Shabbat, we'll drive to the park. Okay. So, again, I'm not about legalism. I'm helping people understand the principle.
8:24 So my recommendation is don't drive if you can avoid it to places they're gonna just be stressful for you. Don't go shopping on Shabbat. Don't go to the grocery store on Shabbat. Everything that you could do to preserve
8:36 it as a time of no stress is gonna help you to receive the anointing that God wants to give you. We know in Yeshua that we have
8:48 rest in him. Yeah. Come on to me all you that are weary and heavy laden, Jesus said, right, and I will give you rest. And so many Christians think, well, I don't need Shabbat anymore because my rest is in Jesus. And
8:58 that's true 100 percent. But the 1 doesn't disqualify the other. Both are true. We enter into rest in Jesus, and then we enhance that rest by taking a day a week to
9:10 truly celebrate the creation principle. I like what Jeremiah said. Let's read it. Because we can forsake God's principles in the law, we're gonna suffer for it. What did what did the prophet say?
9:20 He said, for my people have committed 2 evils. They've forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no
9:32 water.
9:33 That can hold no water. So we said, okay. We don't need we don't need God's principles. We don't need the Torah anymore. We don't need all that. And in in in in in essence, what we've done is replace it with
9:45 running all over the place like a chicken with our heads cut off, thinking we're gonna get satisfied with the things of the world. And the Lord said, you've forsaken me, the God that revealed
9:57 in Genesis 2 Yeah. That he created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th. We've forsaken him for fountains that hold no water. There's no water in running around 7 days a week.
Creating a Sanctuary of True Rest
10:09 Wow. Amen.
10:10 Look at look at what you well, look at what Isaiah said in Isaiah chapter 30 verse 15 that kind of speaks to this principle.
10:16 Sure. Isaiah 30 15 says, for thus the Lord God, the holy 1 of Israel has said, in repentance and rest you will be saved. In quietness and trust is your
10:28 strength. But you were not willing.
10:30 You weren't willing. God says, I want you to return to me in quietness and in rest. The power of our salvation, beloved, is made
10:42 known in quietness and rest. Again, Psalm 46, cease striving. Cease striving and know that I'm God. And so at the end of the day,
10:54 this is an opportunity for spiritual blessing, but some of you are asking asking the question, well, how exactly do I practice it? And how could I do it when I've got so much work to do? So many of us are very, very
Practical Discipline for Divine Blessing
11:05 busy. We're working 5 days a week, and we look at the weekend as a time to catch up on laundry, catch up on paying bills, and all these other things.
11:13 Yeah.
11:14 We're living in a difficult time. Right. It's much more stressful today than it was, you know, 50 or 100 years ago in many ways, and specifically as it relates to having to be busy all the time to keep up with the
11:25 progression of the speed at which life moves.
11:28 Well, I feel like I can't take a day off. I mean, if if if I work 5 days
11:32 Right.
11:32 I mean, Saturday and Sunday is not enough. Right. It feels like you can't get it all done.
11:36 Right. So to speak to that, let's 1st of all remember that when Israel stopped working on the 7th day of the week, remember God supernaturally preserved that manna on the 6th day so they could eat it on the
11:48 7th. So it's the same thing is true with us. If we will honor God in this and take a day a week to rest unto him, he will supernaturally bless the other 6 days of the week. So we'll get more done
12:00 and have more prosperity by honoring him and taking a day of rest on him than we would have had, and we work 7 because we think we can't afford to stop. We have too much work to do.
12:12 And you really don't have that blessing if you if you're working, if you're trying to go, you actually miss that blessing that he's trying to give you otherwise.
12:20 Exactly. So what does it mean? Number 1, it means we have to prepare to take a day of rest. In other words, if you're used to doing your laundry both days during the weekend, you have to work a little harder
12:33 and discipline yourself to get the work that you would have done on Shabbat to get that done earlier in the week. For example, in Judaism, they'll precook their meals
12:42 Yeah.
12:42 So they don't have to cook on Shabbat. So number 1, we have to do some planning so that we can have a day a week when we rest. You might have to get up a little earlier during the during the 6 days of the week, maybe
12:53 stay up an hour or so later, but you have to prepare to celebrate it. And it does take discipline. Unfortunately, much of the church has thrown off discipline. We don't
13:05 hear much teaching on discipline in the church today. We're free.
13:08 We just do whatever we want.
13:10 It's a it's a But
13:11 it's not always beneficial.
13:12 No. It's a greasy grace and a sloppy agape. No. Paul said discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. So we discipline our lifestyle to be able to have a day a week unto the lord, and as a result, we are we are
13:23 blessed for it.
13:25 It's not that we have to do this. It's that what we're missing by not doing it. Exactly.
13:31 I mean, there's a call of God upon everyone that's created in his image to walk in the divine design that he's given us. But it's not like God's gonna put a sledgehammer on you if you don't do it, but I think it will
13:43 grieve him if we resist his wisdom. And eventually, we're gonna be brought into divine alignment. We're not under the law. And so it's not like that. But again, it's like we have to understand this is God's divine
13:53 pattern for humanity. There's a blessing by getting into alignment with him. Eventually, he's gonna bring the whole world into alignment with it. So why wait till then to be blessed? You see, God promises
14:05 a blessing if you'll practice Shabbat. Let's read as we close today, Dustin. Isaiah chapter 58 verse 13 and 14.
14:12 Sure. Isaiah 58 verses 13 through 14 says, if because of the Sabbath you turn your foot from doing your own pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy
14:23 day of the Lord honorable, and honor it, desisting from your own ways, from seeking your own pleasure and speaking your own word, then you will take delight in the Lord, and
Turning from Pleasure to Delight in God
14:35 I will make you ride on the heights of the earth. And I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
14:44 I love this. Listen, I my favorite part of this verse is the Lord says, I will make you ride on the heights of the earth. Let's look at the scripture together again. The Lord says, if because of the Sabbath what does
14:56 this mean? This means because we're committed to receiving god's word and applying it to our life and we recognize that the Sabbath is a creation principle and so we wanna honor him as the
15:08 god that created everything, So we're gonna honor the Sabbath. And so the Lord says, if because of the Sabbath, because you wanna honor me in this, you turn your foot, now get this, from doing your
15:19 own pleasure Mhmm. On my holy day. So we're making a conscious decision. When I celebrate Shabbat, there's a lot of things that I'd like to do that I'm saying no to. Yeah. Why? Because I wanna honor
15:31 the Lord in a special way on Shabbat. So the Lord says if you do this and call the Sabbath a delight, even though it's hard, it's hard to celebrate Shabbat because we're used to being busy.
15:44 It's very difficult to stay close to home, to not be addicted to your social media because you don't wanna be on social media during Shabbat. You don't wanna be on social media. You don't wanna be engaged in the things
15:54 of the world. Remember, you're being refreshed under the Lord, and that's hard for us to break away from that because we're addicted to the technology. So we're making a conscious decision to resist it, to
16:06 turn away from it, to say no to it. And the Lord says, when you do this in order to honor me and you call the the Shabbat, the Sabbath holy and a delight, In other words, even though it's hard for us
16:18 Yeah. We're still saying, Lord, this is a blessing, and I am blessed to be able to participate in it.
16:23 Now now with social media, for what if for me that brings me I feel like I'm getting rest from it. Why is that possibly harmful for me? Even if because, like, for me it's, oh, I disengage.
16:35 I'm less stressed. You know, it's entertaining me. Why why does that why is that why are you saying that's harmful?
16:42 Well, it depends. Like, if you're looking at your emails, that's stressful. Don't do it. If you're watching, YouTubes that are not honoring to the Lord, anything that you watch you have to filter it through. Is this
16:53 honoring to you, Lord? Uh-huh. And I do that every day of the week, but especially on Shabbat, I make sure that I'm not gonna be receiving any content that's gonna excite me unnecessarily, cause stress.
17:05 Yeah. It's not about legalism, but you have to be honest with yourself, and you have to not compromise, and you have to not make excuses. Because once you open up the door a little bit in making an excuse, then it's not
17:16 long before the doors open all the way.
17:18 And sometimes you scroll it. You're scrolling on social media. You don't know what you're gonna encounter. Yeah. You have no idea what's good. The algorithm is deciding. Yeah. It might upset you. Yeah. You might exit
17:28 that rest. Rabbi, I wanna before we end and you conclude us today, I wanna make sure that a lot of people are asking this question. Is Shabbat Saturday or Sunday? And,
17:40 like, okay. If Shabbat is Saturday, I go to church on Sunday. I don't even have time to do a true Shabbat. How how do we fit Shabbat into our lives?
17:48 So 1st of all, Shabbat, the Sabbath, has never been changed from Saturday to Sunday. That happened in the 3 hundreds under Constantine who wanted to make Christianity the
18:00 state religion, and he became anti Jewish, and he wanted to disconnect himself and his people from everything that was Jewish. And so he said, from now on, we're not gonna celebrate Shabbat on the
18:12 Jewish day. And it's not just a Jewish day. It's God's day. He said, we're gonna do it on the day of the sun. So they used to worship the sun during Constantine's time, the physical sun. So they said, we're gonna from
18:23 now on make Shabbat during the venerable day of the sun. That's why it's called Sunday after the sun. So he switched Shabbat from Saturday to Sunday. However, Sunday is
18:35 the day that the church early church met because it's the day that Yeshua was raised from the dead, and so it's the 1st day of the week. So the the truth is is Shabbat has always been from Friday at
18:47 sunset to Saturday at sunset because in creation, we find that each day be began actually in the evening. But the practice of Shabbat will be part of the millennial
18:59 kingdom and the age to come. It's very important for us to hear this. The practice of Shabbat honoring the Lord as the God of creation will be evident even in the
19:11 world to come. When there's a new heavens and a new earth, the Bible says all flesh will worship the Lord Mhmm. During Shabbat. So this is a creation principle. It acknowledges the fact that God is the
19:22 creator of heaven and of earth. I want to encourage people at the most basic level to take a day a week. If you're if you can do it on Sunday but can't do it on Saturday, do it on Sunday.
19:34 Eventually, the time's gonna come where we're all gonna do it on the last day of the week. We're gonna do it from, you know, from
19:40 And you read that earlier.
19:41 Yeah. Yeah. But but right now, I I again, I'm not wanting to put people under legalism. I'm wanting you to open up to understand that the pattern of the creator is to take a day a week and
19:53 honor him on that day so that we can be blessed and refreshed. Around 20 years ago, when I started traveling all over the country teaching on the Jewish roots of the Christian faith,
Eternal Pattern and Ministry Call
20:04 this message that you heard today was the 1st message that I began to teach. I called it the principle of the Sabbath and the presence of God. And you know what? Everywhere I
20:16 went people were so like excited to hear truth that they had never heard before. Beloved it's because of your financial support that I'm able to broadcast truths that people are
20:28 not hearing other places. The Bible tells us that the church should support those men and women that go out for the sake of the truth. If you believe in me, if you believe that this
20:40 ministry is important, if you believe that the word that you heard today is important for other people to hear and that God wants to get it out, I wanna ask you, would you lift your heart to the
20:52 Lord about making a financial offering to the Lord today through Discovering the Jewish Jesus? It's only because of you beloved that people are being saved and brought closer to the Lord through this ministry.
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