The three jewels are named in a fixed order for a reason the tradition treats as logical rather than arbitrary: refuge in the Buddha comes first because he is the source, the one who discovered and taught the path to liberation without depending on another teacher; refuge in the Dharma follows because it is what he taught, the content of the path itself, both as recorded teaching and as the reality the teaching describes; refuge in the Sangha comes third because it is the community that preserves the Dharma across generations and provides the human context in which a person can actually practice it. The Pali Vinaya records the going-for-refuge formula as the standard rite by which a lay follower formally became a disciple and, with the addition of further vows, by which a monk or nun was ordained, and reciting it three times remains the ordination formula across Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana monasticism today.
Buddhist tradition distinguishes the three jewels, worthy of veneration, from the three refuges as a subjective act, the taking of refuge itself, and further distinguishes conventional embodiments, an actual Buddha image, an actual book of scripture, an actual community of monks, from the ultimate jewels they point toward: the quality of awakening itself, the truth it discloses, and the community of those who have realized it at any level, described in some traditions as the noble sangha distinct from the ordinary monastic sangha.