What does the Bible mean when it calls the law a yoke no one could bear?
The law was a yoke because its demands were almost impossible to keep, proving mankind could not measure up to God's standard of holiness and righteousness. Neither the Old Testament forefathers nor the Jews of Peter's day could bear it. The law could not remove sin; it only convinced people of their sin.
Les explains that the law had demands on the human race that were almost impossible to keep, because God had to show mankind there was no way they could measure up to His standard of holiness and righteousness. Thus the law became a yoke that neither the forefathers in Old Testament days nor the Jews of Peter's day were able to bear. Paul later refers to similar things in Galatians as beggarly, begging to be something better. The law could not bring a person out of sin; all it could do was convince him of his sin, as Romans chapter 3 points out. Israel, coming out of Egypt, was surrounded by pagan culture, and when God gave the law at Mount Sinai, He did not lift them out of the world. They still had to live and move and eat and sleep amid paganism, while the whole world system kept working even though Israel was now under the law. God did not suddenly transport them into a spiritual world all their own, and that is why they failed so often.