The significance of Jesus driving those who were selling items for sacrifice and also other related businesses from the temple was announcing coming to an end of sacrificing in the temple as His life was to be offered as final sacrifice. 

A temple (from the Latin word templum) is a building reserved for religious or spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. The term is typically used for such buildings belonging to all faiths where a more specific term such as church, mosque or synagogue is not generally used in English. The presence of God among the Israelites is depicted by the presence of the ark of God that was initially kept in a tent. David one day decided to build a temple for God where the ark of God will be put (2 sam.7:1-5) but God disagreed with him and rather required that his offspring will do that. Hence Solomon decided to build the temple (1 King 5). Solomon actually built the temple for God (1 King 6)

According to 1 King 3:2, since a temple was not built for God, the people were offering their sacrifices at many different alters. This means that the temple is to be a place where sacrifices can be offered. In Luke 18: 10-13 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’  “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ These scriptures confirm that the temple is a House of Prayer as well as a place of sacrifice. It can be concluded that two major actions/activities are to happen in a temple (Isaiar 56:7); 1. Sacrifice to God and 2. Prayer to God. 

In Hosea 6:6, is it said ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings’. This presupposed that a time will come when sacrifices will no longer be required. Hence the temple will be a house of prayer rather than a place of sacrifice. It is, therefore, understandable when Jesus drove the people who were doing business and making it possible and/or favorable for sacrifice offering in the temple and declared the temple as House of Prayer. Jesus said in John 21:13 ‘it is written, “My house is to be named a house of prayer,” but you are making it a hiding place of thieves.’ also, Mark 11: 17 ‘is it written, my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you have made it a den of robbers.’ 

Jesus Christ actually had been going to the temple by himself from the age of 12 years. He, therefore, might have visited the temple several times and all those times the activities of sacrificing with selling and money changing were on going in the temple. When the process of him offering himself as the living sacrifice to God had started with the triumphant entry into Jerusalem, he then made the people know and drove them away declaring the temple as a House of Prayer. His death is the final sacrifice that took place and hence no sacrifice is to be undertaken in the temple. The only activity that can now be done in the temple is to pray hence the temple is House of Prayer.