Matthew 11:11-24

Significance of John’s ministry

11 “I assure you that no one who has ever been born is greater than John the Baptist. Yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
12 From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven is violently attacked as violent people seize it.
13 All the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John came.
14 If you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come.
15 Let the person who has ears, hear.

This generation

16 " To what will I compare this generation? It is like a child sitting in the marketplaces calling out to others,
17 ‘We played the flute for you and you didn't dance. We sang a funeral song and you didn't mourn.'
18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.'
19 Yet the Human One came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunk, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.' But wisdom is proved to be right by her works."

Condemnation of Bethsaida and Capernaum

20 Then he began to scold the cities where he had done his greatest miracles because they didn't change their hearts and lives.
21 " How terrible it will be for you, Chorazin! How terrible it will be for you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles done among you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have changed their hearts and lives and put on funeral clothes and ashes a long time ago.
22 But I say to you that Tyre and Sidon will be better off on Judgment Day than you.
23 And you, Capernaum, will you be honored by being raised up to heaven? No, you will be thrown down to the place of the dead. After all, if the miracles that were done among you had been done in Sodom, it would still be here today.
24 But I say to you that it will be better for the land of Sodom on the Judgment Day than it will be for you."

Footnotes 1

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