Scherer's published sermons are to be found in four volumes:
Where God Hides (1934),
Facts that Undergird Life (1938),
The Place Where Thou Standest (1942), the product of his parish ministry, and in his final work,
The Word God Sent. He had many of the gifts of a fine writer, beautiful English, an active imagination, a flair for pictorial expression, and a wide acquaintance with literature. He showed a deep insight into the teaching of Scripture, and he likewise understood the perplexing problems confronting men today.
He never tried to bring God down to the level of people and of their understanding. He showed them God and let them try to reach Him themselves. Harry Emerson Fosdick said of his preaching: "It has a prophetic quality which springs forth from the depths of the man. The great tradition of the Christian faith is genuinely real to him, and his persuasive power to transmit his convictions to his hearers and to share his experiences with them is extraordinary."
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His sermons are somewhat complicated -- not that the words or the outline are unclear but because he says so much in a little space. It may be for this reason that he delivered his sermons slowly. They are thought-provoking and packed with content. Almost every paragraph flashes with searching insight, almost every page contains an arresting quotation. The style is clear, fresh-flowing, warm and imaginative. It often has poetic overtones and is sometimes punctuated with humor or subtle irony.
David Randolph says of his sermons: "They radiate that quality by which W.H. Auden recognizes the true poet: he is one who is passionately in love with language. Paul Scherer seems to polish a sermon until the language is broken through and the face of Christ peers out. His sermons have a strange and haunting power which lingers in the mind, stirring the memory and elevating one with ever new apprehensions of the truth of their claim."
Martin E. Marty, who has kept his finger on the pulse of modern preaching, points out that all too much of it exhausts itself in "well-meant moralisms," seldom letting "the weight fall on Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God." In Paul Scherer's sermons is the antidote to all such emasculated preaching. It is always preaching of the Word of God, which is both law and gospel, judgment and grace. His sermons are always Bible-centered, and yet pregnant with contemporary reference. They have theological backbone without being stiff, evangelical ardor and weighty substance of thought. The biblical message and human experience are brought together. It is the meeting of the two about which he invariably speaks.
Paul Scherer did emphasize some of the social implications of the Gospel. He took a stand on the problem of war. As a pacifist he supported members of his congregation who were conscientious objectors in World War II. He protested against the manufacture of hydrogen bombs in the United States because of the moral issues involved. With Fosdick he deplored the Korean conflict in 1953.
