God has declared that the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord. When “the heavens and the earth were finished,” He exalted this day as a memorial of His creative work. Resting on the seventh day “from all His work which He had made,” “God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it.” Genesis 2:1-3. (PK 180.1) MC VC

At the time of the Exodus from Egypt, the Sabbath institution was brought prominently before the people of God. While they were still in bondage, their taskmasters had attempted to force them to labor on the Sabbath by increasing the amount of work required each week. Again and again the conditions of labor had been made harder and more exacting. But the Israelites were delivered from bondage and brought to a place where they might observe unmolested all the precepts of Jehovah. At Sinai the law was spoken; and a copy of it, on two tables of stone, “written with the finger of God” was delivered to Moses. Exodus 31:18. And through nearly forty years of wandering the Israelites were constantly reminded of God’s appointed rest day, by the withholding of the manna every seventh day and the miraculous preservation of the double portion that fell on the preparation day. (PK 180.2) MC VC