Preaching on tithing is common.  Whenever funds are needed for the budget a new sermon is crafted to pressure the flock to give.  One day while listening to the local CSN (Calvary Satellite Network) radio station(102.3FM). I listened to the preacher talk about tithing. This preacher is well respected with a large national program. He was quoting the Old Testament concerning the first fruits and the tithe. He was asking the congregation about their financial health and their faithfulness to give and relating the two together. He was promising material blessing if they only would give. He quoted the Malachi 3 verse and said it is a liberating promise, he was saying that the storehouse is the local church and if you want to get blessed materially all you have to do is give your minimum 10% to the church and God will pour out on you a blessing(specifically: material blessing).

This preacher would refute the prosperity gospel of wealth and health but he has no problem equating tithing with prosperity, he has no problem quoting Old Testament scriptures out of context and twisting them. Perhaps he doesn't do this specifically for the  budgets sake, perhaps he is well meaning and really believes that Christians will be materially blessed if they give 10% to the church. But, the tithe preaching church budget including this very pastor's salary, provides ample motivation to squeeze scriptures out of context for the sake of funding.

Scriptures teach - multiple tithes (tenths). All tithing was an agricultural tithe of the land of promise. If your product (say you were a shoemaker or carpenter) was not an agricultural product of the land you were not required to tithe. One of the tithes was for the Levites (approximately 1/12 of the people). A whole national economy, including maximum 6 year debts, legalized slavery, permanent land inheritance (if sold, returned to original family at the year of jubilee, every 50 years), revolved around the tithe. Tithing was the 10th not the first. If the tenth was lame or moldy that was allowed. Its purpose was not for sacrifice or offering to God. There is prosperity promise in the Old Testament. Israel was promised blessing (material prosperity) or cursing dependent upon their behavior. Today's Tithe preaching church is materialistic and uses the materialistic promises of the Old Testament to suit its own financial budgeting needs.

For Christians to really be able to say they tithe would require;
1) Agricultural land in Israel
2) Agricultural products of that land
3) Levites to give it to

The application of Malachi 3 for Christians is not liberating. It is bondage. There is curse in Mal.3. To place Christians under this curse is to curse them with the curse from which Christ died to liberate from. Sounds a lot like Galatians doesn't it? The bondage of the law applied to Christians. To say Christians ought to tithe is to use the same logic that the Judiazers of Galatia used to say Christians ought to be circumcised. It was a pre-law example in Abram, it was a covenant with God's people, if you don't do it you're in sin... You don't have to go back to 1st century history to see the Judiazers of Galatia. The old Judiazers of Galatia are back, they are the materialistic tithe preaching churches of today.