The force that resists motion
Push a bus the way you pushed the table and, on your own, it will not move. But push it with a group of other people helping, and it will.
The same thing is happening in both cases: an object starts to move when the force applied to it overcomes a force that opposes its motion.
Friction
When an object moves over a surface, the resisting force that obstructs that motion is called friction.
Friction always acts in the direction opposite to the motion. So part of the force you apply is spent simply on overcoming it.
What if the surface changes?
Had that table been standing on a very smooth surface such as ice, even a very small force could have started it moving. The resisting force would then be small enough to ignore, so the whole of the force applied goes into moving the table.
The carrom board
Flick a carrom disc lying on a carrom board with your fingernail and it travels a short way across the board before coming to rest.
Sprinkle powder over the board, spread it well, and flick the disc again with exactly the same strength. This time it travels a very much greater distance before stopping. What the powder does is reduce the friction.
If the frictional force could somehow be made zero, the carrom disc would travel on without ever stopping.
What this shows
That last sentence opens the door to the most important idea in this chapter. It is Newton's first law — we reach it two sections from here.