God blesses when the world is unjust.

His master saw that the LORD was with him and that the LORD caused all that he did to succeed in his hands. So Joseph found favor in his sight and attended him, and he made him overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had.

Genesis 39:3-4

The story of Joseph is one of the triumph of God despite jealousy, hate, and racially motivated injustice. The trouble that Joseph faced came both from within his own family (his brothers were jealous of his father’s favoritism and wished Joseph dead... they settled for selling him into slavery to get him out of their lives) and also from with a majority culture that became his new normal (the Egyptians were prejudiced against him... they ethnically derided him as “the Hebrew” and devalued him as a slave and then eventually as a prisoner). Joseph was framed by lies and injustice. Yet in all of the story of Joseph, God was with him, bringing greater glory out of his awful circumstances.

Joseph’s Egyptian master, Potiphar, was well aware of Joseph’s commitment to Yahweh. The text goes out of its way twice to tell us his master saw the LORD as the reason that Joseph was blessed, and knowing that, made Joseph the head over his household. Joseph was the chief of staff over all that occurred in Potiphar’s life and it went very well as a result. God blessed the Egyptian’s household under Joseph’s wise and capable service.

Having God’s blessing however does not mean that we should expect to never know any hardship. If anything, the story of the life of Joseph is that God uses the hardships to bring about even greater blessings. The lows of Joseph’s story accentuate God’s mercies and deliverance. Joseph goes from a pit of persecution to become an administrator for one of the wealthiest families in the world at that time. He later goes from prison to the palace. Along the way God moves him past hate, misunderstandings, lies, and horrible injustice to be the recipient of blessing, service, care, and wisdom which Joseph freely shares with the culture that had once minimized him. 

Joseph is never a helpless, bitter victim. God shows us in his story how we must trust as God works even when people do their worst to us. And even if people do their worst to us, God still blesses and saves. We can expect that in a society of sinners, we will always have to correct injustice. But even then, God is always blessing and through the gospel, saving beyond our broken human system!