Beyond The Table

Morning, everyone. Welcome to Gateway Church. My name is Carlos and I’m our senior pastor. If you’re watching online, we’re so glad that you are joining us. Don’t know if you know this or not, but there are a lot of people who watch on Sundays and throughout the week to catch up as they travel or they’re visiting family. So if you’re in the room here at North, we give it up for everybody who’s watching whether live or catching up later on. We’re so glad that you are active and doing so.

You know, last week we talked about this, the importance of this ancient prayer. It’s in Scripture, in Deuteronomy chapter six, which we’re going to get to here in a second, called the Shema. It is a prayer prayed by millions of people still to this day, multiple times a day. It’s an understanding that we tell this story and this narrative of who God is, and we do this together. What we’re talking about these next two weeks is the importance of the table.

When we gathered earlier this year, we started talking about rhythms—what does it mean to be in rhythm with Jesus and following Jesus? I really looked at the early church and how they gathered together, how they grew together, how they gave of themselves, and how they went together. So there are these rhythms, and the Shema is part of a rhythm that daily shapes my understanding of what God wants to do in my life. Am I walking in the story of God and truly understanding this?

Last week, we really talked about the table. The table is where a lot of things happen. I don’t know about your family table—maybe it’s big and grand, maybe it’s small, maybe it’s in a big dining room, or maybe it’s in a small apartment corner with three chairs that don’t match. It doesn’t matter. What matters is what happens at the table. Have you ever been to a nice, fancy dinner and walked away really unimpressed, not because the food wasn’t good, but because the company was just something you never want to do again? Then you go to somebody’s house who maybe doesn’t have a whole lot, but you walk away with your heart and your cup full. The food was probably better than the fancy meal, and second of all, the conversation was real, impactful, and made you think, “I want to do that again.”

That’s what the table of God is—it’s this table that we keep coming back to. The tables change over the years because the table is a place where you listen, talk, share, celebrate, and grieve. The table is where you have difficult conversations. Some of the most difficult conversations I’ve ever had with my parents or my wife happened at a table.

It changes over the years. We have six kids, and one married into our family. Our oldest was a boy, and he was all boy. He was bigger than me by the time he was 15 years old. Then we had three daughters, so we were a boy-dominated home. My wife had two brothers, I had two brothers. We had this man-child, and our daughters were subjected to boy culture. Then he went away to college, graduated after a few years, and came back to the table. We weren’t talking about football or all the things he wanted to talk about; now the girls were talking about whatever they talk about, and I could see my son’s face: “This is not the table I used to eat at; this is a girl home now.” Now the three girls are subjecting girl culture to our youngest, Max, who is also all boy. Now he’s very comfortable having conversations I did not have because I didn’t have a sister.

See, the table shifts and changes, but it’s still the table, it’s still inviting, and it’s still where we do life. That is why God says there’s always room at the table for you. Even like we talked about last week, when there’s a fracture, the table was never meant to be the destination. The table was meant to prepare us for what comes next. It’s a place where we find healing, encounter God, and encounter the people God has put in our lives. Now, as we get older and mature, we have our own tables. What are we doing as we steward those tables? Because the table gathers us.

We read part of Deuteronomy chapter six, which says: “Hear, O Israel.” Israel was a group of people, not established by boundaries, but a people group surrendered under a promise given to Abraham hundreds of years before. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” This passage is known as the Shema, and it means to hear, listen, and hear with the intent of doing something. So, hear, O Israel—have your ears open and your hearts open so that whatever is said, you hear and take into action. The Shema is a prayer of action, of remembering, a prayer that centers us yet compels and pushes us to act.

What I love about this is that Moses and the writers don’t stop there because it’s about everyday life. It continues: “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” Notice where Moses says this is supposed to happen—not only in a synagogue, tent, or church like Gateway. It’s wherever you go, wherever you overflow, wherever you do everyday, ordinary life. That’s where life happens with the next generation. Yes, you might be in your house or come to church, and those are important, but as you go about life, how are we impressing on the people we say we love? Maybe you no longer have kids or never had children, yet God is asking you to make an impression on those around you through the table you set. Not of your own gift, but of who God is in you.

So the question is not are we shaping the next generation; the question is what are we impressing on them?

As a kid in the ’80s, they sold these plastic impression tools where a mother could put little messages on bread when making toast. My mom had all sorts of things like this. For my brother, it said, “You are my sunshine,” and he would wake up to that. For my other brother, I don’t remember because I didn’t pay attention, but the baby thought everything he did was great. If he was her sunshine, I was probably her rainy cloud. My mom would change it up for me because I hated morning times; I was an angry kid. My parents made a rule when I was eight or nine that I was not allowed to talk in the morning because I had nothing good to say. So for nine or ten years, I just didn’t talk in the mornings. I was fearfully and wonderfully made, right? But my mom sent me messages by pressing little phrases like “Smile” or “Jesus loves you,” and I would angrily eat that toast.

My mom understood that there’s something about impressing on kids. If the Shema initially is about understanding who God is, His goodness, and His story, this week I want to challenge us: What does the Shema compel us to do now that we know the story of God? As we learn the story of God, what are we supposed to do? They seem simple, yet they’re not as simple as they sound.

1. Learn to Receive God’s Love The first thing we do that impresses the next generation is learn how to receive God’s love. Before Moses tells Israel to impress these things on their children, he says, “First, hear, O Israel.” Hear means to listen, and then love the Lord your God. But we know in Scripture that we don’t love God first; God loved us first. In order to love God, we have to receive and acknowledge the love of God first. God loved you first, and in response, we love God, and then you impress it on your children. There is a flow.

This is where the gospel is so different from other religions. The good news of Jesus is that God sent His Son to earth in our stead to take our sin and shame, cast it on the cross, and by His grace, love, and mercy, He was resurrected with new life. The same power that raised Jesus from the grave is now available to us by His Holy Spirit. We do not do what we do to impress God. We don’t love God enough, obey enough, or try hard enough so that maybe God will accept us. No, we first accept His love. When we truly, wholeheartedly receive the love of God, it changes, shapes, and marks us forever.

When I believe, do I believe God has a grace so great that it covers all my sin and shame? Receiving that love compels me to want to be more like Christ—not to impress God, but to impress His goodness onto other people. God went first. That distinction matters because people, whether young in age or young in the faith, are watching us. They need to know what it looks like to be loved by God, to have grace in the home, to experience forgiveness, repentance, and faith when the world is falling apart. Our children and those new to faith are learning from us even when we aren’t intentionally trying to teach them. They are sponges.

When we receive the love of God fully, it is large, overwhelming, and compelling. That’s why Moses begins with, “These commandments are to be on your hearts.” Before God’s word is something we impress on others, it has to be something that has impressed us.

2. Impress It on Your Children We must impress it on our children. The Hebrew word for impress is Shanan, which can be translated as “impressed by repetition.” What we repeat is what we impress. It means to engrave it on their hearts, intentionally marking them with who God is.

When I was 11 years old, I was running through the church. An older woman grabbed my arm and said, “You can’t run through this church; your dad’s the pastor here.” I apologized, but later that night, her son called my dad, and I got a spanking. I remember thinking at that point, “I don’t know if I believe in God now, and I don’t like the church.” I was marked, but away from God instead of toward Him.

When we make an impression, it should point toward something. In 2020, my mother-in-law, Mary Wilson, decided to host six of her granddaughters for a week while the world was shut down and called it “Camp Seneca” after her street name. They told stories, laughed, cried, and processed life together. She repeated it every year through 2026. Through loss, divorce, and change, she gathered them every summer to make an impression by repetition.

Faith is passed through conversations, not presentations. The most important conversations won’t happen in a church building; they will happen when you’re walking, eating, and doing everyday life. Ordinary life becomes discipleship.

3. Tell the Story Psalm 78 tells us to pass down the praises and deeds of the Lord so the next generation puts their trust in God and does not forget His works. We tell stories so people don’t forget.

I remember telling my son Maxwell about when I was a teenager, far from Jesus, and got arrested for a weekend. The next Sunday at church, he told his teachers, “My dad was in jail!” I was their pastor and had to explain it was a long time ago, but he remembered part of the story. My job is to keep telling the story until he gets it right. People don’t need perfect friends; they need people who serve a perfect God. When we tell the story, faith becomes an inheritance, a gift, and a treasure.

4. Make Room Jesus constantly modeled making room for all kinds of people—Pharisees, tax collectors, women, children, outcasts. The gospel continually expands the table. Natural instinct closes the table, but the gospel opens it as an invitation.

In Luke 10, when asked, “Who is my neighbor?”, Jesus answered with the story of the Good Samaritan, showing that everyone we encounter is our neighbor. People are watching how we interact with the world and how we show hospitality. We saw this with the Sutherland family, who brought their kids along to donate Bibles and backpacks to hundreds of children in Central Texas, demonstrating how to impress God’s love on the next generation through action.

For parents and grandparents who feel they’ve failed: there is grace. Pick up where you are and move forward without shame. The next generation isn’t counting on you to be perfect, but to be available and to model a humble life surrendered to Jesus.