NOTE – Peter has replied to helpful comment on this post.
Different versions translate some things in slightly different ways. One version says “healed” where another says “saved.” Sometimes a footnote points out an alternative reading to the one in the text, but other versions choose the alternative reading. What do we do when we are preaching a text with a textual variant in it?
1. Recognize that the listeners may be using different versions. This means that it might be worth a brief passing comment that “your version may have it this way…” Generally it is probably better to affirm both as possible, or express a preference for one over the other in a gracious manner that does not tear down the alternative.
2. Recognize that your listeners are not experts in textual criticism. (Incidentally, be honest with yourself too. Just because you can pronounce a Greek word in a dictionary does not mean you are a Greek scholar.) So we should be very hesitant to overwhelm people with textual critical issues. In reality, most of the time this will achieve a double goal. First it may show how much work you’ve done, what skill you have or perhaps add confidence in your understanding of the passage. More importantly, second of all it almost certainly will undermine their trust in their own Bibles. People don’t understand how their version came to exist, they don’t grasp the process from inspiration to translation, and so your textual critical observation may very well cause them to distrust their Bible. “If my version is wrong in this verse, why should I trust it anywhere else?”
3. Do your work in preparation, but think carefully what you say while preaching. The last thing we want to do is inadvertently undermine peoples’ trust in the Bible sitting open in their lap!
Biblical Preaching 
Hi Peter,
Found you via Unashamed Workman. I’ve been discussing Textual Criticism and preaching over at my blog this week too.
One additional thought I have had recently is that there is a growing need that our people do know where their translations come from and what has been involved in getting our bibles, because I fear that atheists and sceptics like Hitchens, Bart Erhman are and will be having a field day if we don’t instruct them…..they continually present the false idea that lack of certainty, which they exaggerate, must go hand and hand with lack of truth and therefore must be followed by unbelief…and I fear that when a lot of Christians who have no idea about how they got their Bibles hear their arguments, their faith is severely impacted….arguable Ehrman is an example of this himself.
So I’m wondering if we need to be very proactive in instructing our churches at a popular level on this subject, as an inoculation against pseudo-scholars who only tell half truths at best? Perhaps Sunday School is the best forum for this, rather than the Sunday pulpit?
Thanks Paul, I would agree wholeheartedly with what you write here. Perhaps the greater influence is not the pseudo-scholars, but the pseudo-pseudo-scholars like Dan Brown (Da Vinci Code) . . . a lot of people have taken onboard a smoke-filled room, conspiracy theory view of canon formation, which only adds to the confusion.
If we don’t address the issue of how people got their Bibles, we only leave it to Ehrman, Brown, et al. Where should we address it? Sunday School is certainly a good place, but the Sunday pulpit should not be discounted. We can achieve a lot by example of how we treat Scripture, carefully and repeatedly planted comments or brief explanations, etc. In our church we have run a couple of seminars in the place of home groups – brings people together midweek and allows us to address this kind of issue.