"Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it." (Exodus 20:8-11, NRSV)
Keep the Sabbath--literally a day of stoppage. It is day that we are to separate out from the rest of the days so we can strengthen our focus on God. Every day should be focused on God--but the Sabbath should be a particularly heighten focused on God (and not us). We are to stop the normal things that we do every other day of the week. It is meant as a day of rest from our normal labors, but that doesn't mean it was meant to be lstrict and legalistic stoppage of all work. The Hebrews knew they still had to feed their flocks and such. It is not meant to be a lazy day to hang around and watch football or even be with the family (although those activities could be okay). It is meant to focus even moreso our activities on God.
We are to rest for the normal stresses of the world and relax in the glory of God. The keeping of the sabbath is also the sign that the Lord has made a covenant with us. When we observed the Sabbath, we show the world that we are set-apart (holy) and that the Lord is working in us and has made a covenant with us to bless his world.
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