I really have a hard time understanding how religious people cope with themselves with this kind of stuff. You seem to be perfectly ok with god, a dictator, making rules that if you don't obey, you get killed for. How is that an all loving god? Why would you agree with that, why do you think that's a good idea at all? So a guy picking up sticks should be put to death because god said you shouldn't work on the sabbath and you think thats fair because ey, god said you shouldn't? Where is your free will then? Not fucking free will if you get killed for it, is it? Plus what the fuck is that law anyways that you shouldn't work in a specific day and how fucking horrible is it, to work on a specific day that you should die for it. You think if Trump or any other president would make a law like that today, anyone would agree? Honestly you people are fucked in the head.
The reason you feel this way is because you regard this particular commandment as trivial and regard God as myth. Thus your imagination is filled with visions of inquisitions and persecuted innocents.
There is no religions group I am aware of even extremist sects that advocate a death penalty for working on the sabbath.
Your fear of being forced at gun point to relax one day a week seems far fetched to the point of ridiculousness.
You also fail to appreciate that without God you are basically operating under nihilistic assumptions and under nihilism any system of rules a society chooses to implement and enforce is by definition arbitrary and meaningless. You can operate by might makes right, let the judges make the rules, or let a majority vote rule all are equally arbitrary and meaningless under nihilism.
What is interesting about the Sabbath is the high degree of importance that is attached to it in the Bible. As other commandment like don't murder are obvious in their necessity one cannot help but wonder why the Sabbath is so critical that it is essentially elevated to near same level of importance as avoiding murder.