And the LORD said to Moses, "You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, 'Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the LORD, sanctify you. You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever. It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.'" And he gave to Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.
Exodus 31:12-18
It is perhaps significant that these verses enjoining Sabbath observance follow immediately upon the insistence in 11 that Bezaleel and his companion should work in strict conformity to the divine pattern. The comment in the previous Note about the prohibition placed on man to remind him of his creatureliness is relevant here also. The 'imposition' of a day of rest was, as in Genesis 3, the test of their submission to God, and the remembrance of their dependence upon Him. This, when gladly received and accepted, was to become a source of inestimable blessing to the people of God. Not only was it to be one of the chief signs that marked them out as the people of God - it is still the same today - but it was to be a source of wellbeing and refreshment, that wellbeing and refreshment flowing directly from their submission to God. For, contrary to all carnal and natural estimates, utter dependence upon, and submission to, God does not result in either dreary bondage or cramping restriction and frustration, but freedom and liberty. As Chesterton puts it, we become taller when we bow. This is the real issue in Sabbath observance; to think of it in terms of puritanical narrowness and joyless legalism is to miss the point. Rather, since the Sabbath is the Lord's Day, and designed primarily for the enjoyment of the blessings He desires to give His people, to desecrate it is to refuse fellowship with Him and prefer independence. And this was the primal sin in the Garden of Eden.