Proverbs 22:28 -- "Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.
The command to not remove ancient landmarks condenses something Moses told the Israelites as they prepared to enter the promised land. In Deuteronomy Moses tells the Nation of Israel what God expects of them once they have entered, conquered, and taken possession of the land: Thou shalt not remove thy neighbor's landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess (19:14).
The command in Deuteronomy 19 and Proverbs 22:28 deters greedy neighbors, especially in a society that lacked the convenience of modern surveying equipment and satellite imaging. They needed physical landmarks in a way that modern man doesn't. Today if a couple of farmers or ranchers have a dispute about where a property-line is they can refer to a plat map; in antiquity that luxury didn't exist. Today we can refer to a map, but in antiquity they would have taken stones, stacked them into a physical landmark/monument, and going forward folks could appeal to the ancient landmark if they were trying to figure out where the property-line was. Moving the ancient landmarks would have been a real temptation; Moses was not addressing some hypothetical scenario. God knows how our crooked hearts operate. God knows that dark hearts love to steal when they think they can get away with it.
The Nation of Israel was a type and figure of Christ's Kingdom. Christ is the Eternal-Creator King and the entire world is His. So, consider this: when Christians go around and tell folks to stop being a Mormon or stop being a Muslim, to repent and be converted, one of things that is implicit in that call to repent/be converted is that all of creation is God's! Therefore, indirectly we are telling people to stop trying to (re)move the ancient landmarks with their phony-religion. Man is a type of ancient landmark; we were created in the image of God. Human nature is an ancient landmark; our creature-hood is a property line--it communicates "all this creature-stuff is the Creator's."
When somebody tries to be an atheist, or tries to be a Mormon, or tries to be a Muslim, what they are doing is trying to move an ancient landmark: they are trying to take their sins and stack them together into a little mountain of rocks and appeal to that sin-landmark and say, "Ha! This human is not made in the image of the Triune God!" Or they try to take their bricks and build a building and say, "Ha! This little patch of dirt on the corner of such-and-such a road is not part of the Kingdom of Heaven! It is part of make-believe-Mormon land!" But they are wrong. Dead, dead wrong. They can attempt to move the landmark of man with their sin, but that doesn't alter God's ownership (Creatorship) over all of creation.
The Triune Lord created this world. Not Allah. Not Joseph Smith's God. And this world was certainly not created by the atheist's depersonalized goddess "Reason." And when the Triune Lord created this world he placed at the thematic center of this world a mountain with four rivers running down, and on top of that mountain was a garden called Eden; and then God put Adam and Eve in that garden. And you know what that mountain-garden with man and woman in it was? It was the ancientest of ancient-landmarks; basically a landmark that God put in place to communicate to Satan and all the fallen demons that not only was all of Heaven His, but so too the terrestrial ball with humans that bore the divine image.
But Satan came and tempted the woman and man. They rebelled and their rebellion was a form of moving an ancient landmark. They were attempting to steal glory from God! Greedy hands said, "Don't care what God says, gonna take that that fruit God said was off-limits. Don't care where the fence is, if I want something on the other side, well, then I'm just going to pick up the fencepost and scoot it over and take it! Try and stop me."
But God did stop us. If you refuse righteousness, you will be unrighteous. If you refuse to walk in the light, then you will abide in darkness. If you cast off life, then all that is left is death. Adam and Eve thought they could move the ancient landmark; they thought they could gain more by attempting to be like God, by attempting to usurp God's glory. They tried to move an ancient landmark, casting off creaturely obedience in exchange for rebellion, and when they did they corrupted themselves with sin. Their rebellion ruined their ethical nature. Figurative real estate increased, i.e. they gained knowledge of what fruit tasted like from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but the acquisition also turned them into sinners. What did Christ say about such acquisitions? Mark 8:36, For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
So, do not be a thief; do not move ancient landmarks. Do not steal temporal or physical things. But also do not move spiritual ancient landmarks in an attempt to steal God's Glory. Do not attempt to move the ancient landmark that man is a creature made in God's image. Therefore, put on humility. Be humble before the ancient landmarks. Be humble before the Creator by embracing your creature-hood. Be humble before your Lord Jesus; he took on the ancient landmark of human flesh in order to move the landmark back to its origin. Adam moved it with sin and because of sin we couldn't move it back, but Christ was righteous and he came and dealt with the sin and moved the landmark of human nature back to where it began, back to righteousness! And if you are in Christ then your human nature has been restored to the ancient landmark.
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