Our modern world is filled with people and emptied of gods. In the ancient world, the reverse was true. Nearly every culture had a pantheon of deities, and every god was a god of something. These gods were vain and petty and murderous, but each had a role to play in the operation of the created order. It is in milieu of these deities that the Hebrew Scriptures utter, with decisive authority, “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” This is not another god of something; this is The God of All Things.
Later, John circumscribes the whole of created history with this: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away” (Rev. 21:1). The story of the Bible is about how God is not only the Divine Creator, but also the Sovereign King of the Cosmos.