This third WOE in Jesus's Sermon of Seven Woes now shifts from the charge of closing the kingdom of heaven to the lost and for leading false converts into their religious legalism; to the charge of being blind guides, fools, and men who worship the created rather than the creator.

They are the blind leading the blind to the gates of hell.

The importance of the Jerusalem temple cannot be overstated when studying Matthew's gospel. The Jerusalem temple was the center of God's holy presence with HIS people. Jesus called it, 'The House of Prayer' (Matt 21:13) when he aggressively kicked out the corruption that had overtaken it the first day of the week when he entered Jerusalem; his final week of life and ministry.

Because the Temple is the symbolic center of worship and is God's holy dwelling with his creation, the sin of worshiping the creation rather than the creator must also be remembered as nothing new. The religious leaders who faced Jesus’ judgment misinterpreted God’s meaning and purpose for the Temple by emphasizing the objects of sacrifice and the modes of offering rather than the one to whom the sacrifice and offering were intended. It was the worship of the created that condemned the first man and the first woman into the fallen state that corrupts us even now. Likewise, it was the worship of the created that condemned the Pharisees and scribes. The Apostle Paul rightly warns and condemns the fallenness of man for worshiping the created instead of the creator.

"Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things."

(Rom 1:22-23)