Law on Sabbatical

If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: (Isaiah 58:13)

Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you. 14 Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. 15 Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. 16 Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. 17 It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed. (Exodus 31:13-17)

Ancient Israel had a legal system built on the Ten Commandments. We often say of our legal system that it is also built on the Ten Commandments, but it's not really, it's built on the laws of the Saxons and Normans and our ancestors just modified their ancestors' laws to make them more compatible with the Ten Commandments, and this is to the credit of our ancestors. This passage shows one example of how our world would be different if our legal system was built on the Ten Commandments. People who worked on Saturday would be executed. There have been times that various Western nations have enacted laws that forbade work on Sunday, no doubt inspired by this passage, but one must wonder whether they also passed laws enforcing the wearing of blue tassels (Num 15:38) and forbidding the consumption of pork (Lev 11:7). I think not. If we are going to make laws inspired by the laws of Ancient Israel who is going to decide on which apply to our society today and how thoroughly they should be applied?
One may claim that because the Sabbath is among the Ten Commandments it is more appropriate to make a law enforcing it. If you use that argument you should also follow the commandment properly and keep it on Saturday, it has no significance when kept on any other day. So if you are going to go around making laws inspired by the Torah, at least get them right. But unfortunately people don't seem to care too much about truth, or consistency.
Jesus established the church as the new Israel, not to be a political nation but a movement of the Holy Spirit. The Ten Commandments have not passed away (Mat 5:18) but this other law that enforces the Sabbath by national law was intended for a political nation, not the church. So we can still keep the Sabbath as it was always meant to be kept, we just don't need to worry about the police knocking on our doors if we don't keep it well enough. Praise Jesus.