The chapter
Simply John sends from prison to ask whether he is the one. Jesus answers with a list of what is happening, then speaks about John to the crowd, then reproaches three towns, and ends with an invitation to the tired.
Context The chapter moves from a question to a rebuke to the gentlest sentence in the Gospel, and the order is Matthew's. Nothing in it answers John directly; he is given evidence and left to judge.
Verses 2-15
Simply Are you the one, or should we look for another? The answer is a list: the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor hear good news. Then he tells the crowd what they went out to the desert to see.
Context The messenger sentence at verse 10 is Malachi's, and the same prophet is behind verse 14, where Jesus says that if they will receive it, John is the Elijah who was to come. Matthew has already dressed John in Elijah's clothes at 3:4 without saying so, and this is where he says it.
Verses 16-24
Simply This generation is like children who complain that nobody dances and nobody mourns: John did not eat and was called possessed, he eats and is called a glutton. Then three towns are named and told it will go worse for them than for Tyre, Sidon and Sodom.
Context The complaint is that both men were refused on opposite grounds, which is the point of the children's game. The three towns are reproached for what did not happen rather than for anything they did: they did not repent, and the comparison towns are ones his hearers would have thought beyond hope.
Verses 25-30
Simply He thanks the Father for hiding these things from the wise and showing them to little children, and then calls anyone who is tired and carrying too much to come to him and take his yoke instead.
Context The invitation is not to put a burden down but to change it, which the image says exactly: a yoke is a thing you wear to pull. Coming immediately after the reproach of three towns, it is offered to the same crowd that has just been told it did not repent.