Not really. Gandalf didn't zap things into existence. He was forbidden from exercising his total power as a Maia; his role was mostly to encourage and lead the free peoples. The Valar remembered well the ruin they made of Middle-earth when Ainu fought Ainu in the days before the sun and in the War of Wrath, and did not want to visit that fate on the Eruhini once more. But the prohibitions are only half the story; even a full-powered Vala like Morgoth couldn't create things ex nihilo. They were limited to working with what Iluvatar had created at the beginning of time.
>>even a full-powered Vala like Morgoth couldn’t create things ex nihilo. They were limited to working with what Iluvatar had created at the beginning of time.<<
OMG — a “Book of Lost Tales” and/or “Silmarillion” reader! I loved those books but that was the toughest set of books I ever read in my life (other than the Bible).
I meant “Gandalf” as a stand-in for an approachable, understandable Wizard.
But, now that you mention it I think I will reread those texts and try harder to apply them to the Bible (upon which they were based).