Exodus 20:25
And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.
Exodus 20:25 belongs to the law that God spoke to Israel at Sinai. That law was written by God's own finger on stone tablets. As part of the commandments given by God as Ruler of the world, it carries divine authority. It was given as positive instruction from God and must be upheld. The Sinai law to which it belongs identifies the seventh day as the memorial of creation.
The verse is part of God's law that expresses His character and makes His will known. It belongs to the perfect law that is the standard of righteousness, which people are accountable to obey and whose principles determine their sentence of life or death. The law to which it belongs is an unchanging standard of right-doing and will be the standard in the judgment. The verse is included in the Sinai commandments that are the highest education for humanity, where obedience teaches people from God rather than from unsanctified human teachers.
The verse commands that an altar of stone must not be built of hewn stone, because lifting a tool upon it pollutes it, since human work pollutes what God makes sacred. It means that human art is not to be used to represent heavenly things, because doing so mingles the sacred with the common and displeases the Lord. It condemns spending thousands of dollars for illustrations in books and crowding books with productions of human fancy in a strife for supremacy over picture-making to make books sell, which feeds the imagination but gives no real spirituality or life and does not convert souls. God Himself can make pictures upon the mind's eye more beautiful and correct than the greatest artist can make.