The tabernacle built and erected at Mount Sinai was a type of Christ as the real tabernacle. This real tabernacle was set up through Christ's incarnation. John 1:14 tells us that the Word, which is God, became flesh and tabernacled among us, full of grace and reality. Whereas the tabernacle built up by Israel under Moses was a type, or a shadow, Jesus Christ, the incarnated God, is the real tabernacle for God's dwelling on the earth and for God's people to contact Him and dwell with Him.

During their years in the wilderness, the children of Israel did nothing except deal with the law and the tabernacle with the altar, the laver, the showbread table, the lampstand, the incense altar, and the ark. Whenever it was time for them to move on in their journey, they packed up the tabernacle and its furnishings and utensils and carried them with them in their move. Eventually they would stop, and the tabernacle and everything related to it would be set up again.

The people also had to present the various offerings to God. Otherwise, they would have been condemned by the law because of their sins in breaking God's commandments. However, the blood of the sin offering that was sprinkled on the cover of the ark fulfilled the requirements of the law and enabled the people to be at peace and to contact God.

Before the incarnation of Christ, God did not do anything for the accomplishment of His New Testament economy. In the Old Testament, God called Abraham, having chosen him and his descendants to be His people, His called race. Centuries later, God brought the people of Israel to Mount Sinai to train them and to help them to know their sinfulness and thereby to convince and subdue them. Whereas the law decreed through Moses was a reality, the tabernacle with all its furnishings and utensils was a type of Christ. Nevertheless, God could dwell in that tabernacle, and the people had a way to contact Him. Throughout the remainder of the Old Testament, in all the books of history and of the prophets, God continued to expose Israel. He exposed them in Joshua and in Judges; He exposed them in the books of Samuel and of the Kings; and He exposed them in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and all the other prophets, both major and minor. It seems that God did not move but rather did only one thing—expose the people of Israel.

God's move on earth for His New Testament economy began with the incarnation, with God's coming as the Son to be incarnated. The incarnation was the setting up of the real and living tabernacle. Thus, the incarnate Christ was the real tabernacle in whom God dwelled and through whom He could move on earth. Beginning with the incarnation, God began to move, to walk, on earth for His New Testament economy. He moved on the earth for thirty-three and a half years and then, after His death and resurrection, ascended to the heavens.

This move of God in Christ is portrayed in Psalm 68:1-18. We have seen that the first part of verse 1 says, "Let God arise," and God did rise up to move. Through what did God move? He moved through the tabernacle. Without the tabernacle, God could not move. This indicates that God moves in Christ and through Christ. Without Christ, God cannot move on the earth. In Christ the Triune God made a long "tour," a tour that lasted thirty-three and a half years and that ended with Christ's ascension to the third heaven.

In typology, this tour, this move, of God for His New Testament economy is pictured in Psalm 68 as the journey of God with Israel from Sinai to Zion. Sinai was the place where the law was decreed, and Zion was the destination of the traveling Triune God and His people. As we consider this, we need to realize that there have been two journeys—a journey in type and a journey in reality. The journey in type was the journey of God with Israel from Sinai through the wilderness to Zion. The journey in reality, the actual move of God on the earth, was the journey of God in Christ as the real tabernacle starting from the incarnation and ending with the ascension to the heavenly Zion.

In Psalm 68 we have the type of God's journey, and in the New Testament we have the fact and the reality. God's actual journey on the earth, His real move on the earth, was His move in Christ, the real tabernacle with the real ark. In order to understand this real journey, we need to study Psalm 68, a psalm that helps us to see that Christ's personal life from His incarnation to His ascension was the journey, the move, of the Triune God. If we realize this, we are ready to consider the first eighteen verses of Psalm 68 in some detail.

Psalm 68 is the highest peak of the divine revelation concerning Christ in all the Psalms. It is written in poetry, with types and signs, portraying the nine steps in God's move on the earth in Christ, the all-inclusive embodiment of the Triune God.