Acts 15:10

Why tempt ye God? That is, why experiment with God as to His will in reference to accepting the Gentiles, when He had already manifested what His will was for them? Should man’s resisting will be made stronger than God’s? The Jews had tempted God in the wilderness (Heb. 3:9) when, in the presence of His mighty works for them, they murmured against the leaders He had given them. They had tempted Christ (1 Cor. 10:9), and their disobedience had brought upon them the punishment of the fiery serpents. Ananias and Sapphira had tempted the Spirit of God by seeking to deceive the church concerning their offering (Acts 5:9). Peter warned his hearers against tempting God again in the matter of admitting the Gentiles.

A yoke. The yoke Peter speaks of was the ceremonial law (see AA 194), together with its traditional elaborations, by which the Jews sought to gain salvation. Paul himself could not have spoken sterner words than these. They harked back to Christ’s own language as to the “heavy burdens” of the traditions of the Pharisees (Matt. 23:4), in comparison with His own “easy” yoke (ch. 11:30). They anticipated Paul’s warning to the Galatians not to be “entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Gal. 5:1).

Able to bear. As originally intended by God, the ceremonial requirements of the law of Moses were not intolerable. Only because the Jews lost sight of their real import, making them a round of ceremonies by which they sought to gain salvation, did these things become an unbearable yoke. Furthermore, the rabbis had sought to make a hedge about the law, so to fence in its precepts by additional regulations of their own that there would be no chance to break the commandment. As a result, the Jewish ceremonial observance had become an intolerable load.