Acts 15:8-12New American Standard Bible (NASB)
8 And God, who knows the heart, testified to them giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us; 9 and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith. 10 Now therefore why do you put God to the test by placing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? 11 But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they also are.”
12 All the people kept silent, and they were listening to Barnabas and Paul as they were relating what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.
Now here the audience was Jews who were doing works vs Gentiles that were not. I've seen lame arguments that works of the Law don't count in salvation but alas the Law itself requires charity giving so if this is the case then works of charity are out for believers as "works".
We must obey God rather than man, so we should be careful not to interpret the Bible as saying that we should obey man rather than God. If God said to do something and the Jerusalem Council said not to obey what God said to do, then we should ignore the Jerusalem Council and obey God instead. The Jerusalem Council had no authority to counterman God or to tell Gentiles not to obey His laws, or to add or subtract from His laws (Deuteronomy 4:2), but they only had the authority to interpret how we should obey God's laws. God's law does not require all Gentiles to come Jews and to keep their customs in order to be saved, so they were upholding the law by rejecting the group that was wanting to require Gentiles to do that. They were not rejecting God's holy, righteous, and good laws, but rather they were rejecting man-made customs.
Matthew 23:4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.
Matthew 11:28-30 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Jeremiah 6:16-19 Thus says the Lord: “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ 17 I set watchmen over you, saying, ‘Pay attention to the sound of the trumpet!’ But they said, ‘We will not pay attention.’ 18 Therefore hear, O nations, and know, O congregation, what will happen to them. 19 Hear, O earth; behold, I am bringing disaster upon this people, the fruit of their devices, because they have not paid attention to my words; and as for my law, they have rejected it.
The law is the good way that gives rest for our souls, so Jesus was comparing his yoke or how he taught to obey the law, which was light and easy, with the yoke of the Pharisees, or how they taught to obey the law, which was a heavy burden. The heavy burden is the mountains of man-made traditions for how to obey the law that perverted it into legalism. God said that His laws were not too difficult to obey (Deuteronomy 30:11), so if they were saying God's law was too difficult for them, then we should again go by what God said rather than man, but they were actually taking about the traditions of the fathers being the heavy burden.